


Forever We Strive

by KouriArashi



Series: The Searching Ceremonies [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Bigotry & Prejudice, Detective Stiles, Established Relationship, F/M, Family, Hale Family Feels, Hurt Stiles, Kid Fic, M/M, Mystery, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels, Stilinski Family Feels, because I always hurt Stiles, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-11-09 05:08:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 100,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11097546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KouriArashi/pseuds/KouriArashi
Summary: When Peter and Sheriff Stilinski decide to adopt a child, they meet a little girl named Malia, whose parents were murdered. But when Stiles starts looking into who killed them, he finds a lot of unanswered questions.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everybody, I'm back! Thank you for all the encouragement and patience you've showed me. ^_^
> 
> A quick note that although this fic has Malia in it, I am departing from canon a *lot*, partly because she obviously can't be Peter's biological daughter in this 'verse, partly because the Desert Wolf storyline really made no sense whatsoever, and partly because I would much rather Tom and Peter get an eight-year-old than a sixteen-year-old. More fun that way. No regrets. =D
> 
> This fic starts about a year and some change after the conclusion of TWB.
> 
> No real additional warnings, some mentions of kidnapping and murder and the sort of things that typically turn up in mysteries, and angry, orphaned children with sharp, pointy teeth.
> 
> To the Derek fans who have commented on his sometimes fading to the background in this fic series, I'm very sorry that he's not in the first chapter much, honestly. I'm working hard to make sure he has a major role in this story. But the first chapter is pretty much all setup, so it's almost entirely Peter and Tom. Derek will be back, I promise!

Christmas has always been a little bittersweet for the Hale family. It calls back a lot of memories of the way things were before the fire. David, the Hales’ youngest son, had loved Christmas, and spent all year carefully compiling lists for Santa. Olivia loved to decorate and made the most amazing baked goods for the holidays. And Derek’s birthday was on Christmas, of course, so it made the holiday even more fun.

Talia can remember the first Christmas after the fire. It was only three months later. She didn’t even want to celebrate, and had wanted to call the entire holiday off. Aaron said that they couldn’t do that, because they would wind up doing it every year for the rest of their lives. So they tried, they really tried. They tried to celebrate like David and Olivia and all the others would have wanted them to celebrate. But it was impossible. Derek had just gotten out of the hospital. Nobody had any idea what to get him, and he refused to ask for anything. Peter had been entirely feral, curled up in a corner and lashing out at anyone who tried to touch him.

But over the years, things did get better. Celebrating the old traditions was too painful, so they invented new ones. Christmas brunch instead of Christmas dinner, and then Chinese take-out later in the day while they sat around and watched movies. Instead of Olivia baking a birthday cake for Derek, they found a bakery that made amazing pies, and tried a new kind every year. A themed Christmas tree every year – one year seashell ornaments, one year flowers – so they didn’t have to open the boxes of ornaments that the children had made.

New family members brought new traditions, too. When Laura met Jonathan two years after the fire, he brought the tradition of opening a single gift at midnight. Stiles brought his amazing mulled cider recipe and driving around Christmas Eve to look at holiday lights.

Looking at her family now, it’s not hard to believe that this is their tenth post-fire Christmas. Everything has changed so much. The huge rec room in their new house is filled with people, most of them rolling around like slugs after stuffing themselves with Chinese food. It has, as always, been a long and exciting day. Aaron had just come downstairs after putting the twins to bed. Laura’s two younger kids are asleep upstairs, but Tyler had begged and pleaded for ‘just a little longer’ until she had given in.

Talia looks around, feeling warm and content. Cora is playing with her new phone while Isaac leans against her, his chin resting on her shoulder. Scott, Allison, Stiles, and Derek are playing cards. Melissa, Tom, and Peter are gathered around a movie while Laura and Jonathan put the food away. Tyler bounces between the groups, wanting to help everyone with what they’re doing.

An hour later, when the movie is over and Tyler has fallen asleep in his father’s lap, still clutching one of his new toys, Peter looks over at Tom and says out of the blue, “Do you think we should tell them now?”

There’s a round of blinking faces, and Tom rolls his eyes. “Well, we kind of have to since you said that, don’t we.”

“Oh, I suppose so.” Peter waves this aside. “We could just tell them not to worry about it.”

“That has worked with my son exactly zero percent of the time since his birth,” Tom says, and indeed, Stiles looks like he’s about to explode from curiosity. Tom gives a snort of laughter and shakes his head, threading his fingers through Peter’s and giving his hand a squeeze. “Peter and I have been talking about adopting a child.”

After a moment of surprised silence, Stiles bursts out, “Oh my God! Oh my God, that’s awesome! That is amazing! You should adopt, like, twelve children – ”

“Let’s not get carried away,” Tom intervenes hastily. “One will be quite enough, at least for now. And it’s not as easy as just strolling down to the neighborhood orphanage, either.”

“No, I know that, I totally know that, private adoption is actually a really complicated subject, and do you know what? I’m happy to look into that for you and do some research, because the idea of having a younger brother or sister is the most amazing thing in the universe!” Stiles is halfway to his feet with excitement; Derek has to get him by the wrist and gently draw him back down. “Uh, if you haven’t already done all the research.”

“Well, we haven’t yet, since we actually only decided for sure to go ahead with it last night,” Tom says, giving Peter an amused glance. “So I guess you can help out if you want.”

“Awesome!” Stiles says, starting to scramble to his feet as if he intends to do it right this moment. Derek patiently pulls him back down again.

“Are you all right, sister?” Peter asks, and Talia realizes that she’s crying.

“I’m just – so happy,” she says, snuffling a little. “I’m so happy for you, Peter. I know that – that this can’t be a decision you came to easily and I – ”

“You know, it was surprisingly easy,” Peter muses, as Aaron puts his arm around Talia. “I just thought about what Olivia would want for me. For us,” he adds, and Tom squeezes his hand again. “I suppose it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Although I suppose it doesn’t have to.”

“We would never expect you to make sense, Uncle Peter,” Derek says, and everybody laughs.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Almost a week has gone by before Stiles calls his father to tell him that he’s done with the preliminary research and has ‘gotten some stuff together’. Tom feels somewhat wary as he heads over to the house where the kids live over their breaks and Stiles and Derek live all the time. It smells as good as always; Stiles has been baking.

“Okay, so, don’t judge me,” Stiles says hurriedly as his ushers his father into a chair, “but I might have gone a little overboard with this research thing and there might be a pie chart or two. Don’t panic. I promise that it’ll make sense once I go over it.”

Tom looks down at the folder Stiles hands him and rubs the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Tell me you didn’t pay money to have this laminated.”

“Of course not, Aaron’s office has a laminator,” Stiles says. “That’s not the point. I wanted to make it look professional.”

“It does look very professional,” Tom says, “and it’s also in no way what I actually asked you for. Exactly what were you avoiding while you went ‘a little overboard’?”

“Uh, baby-sitting the twins,” Stiles says, and Tom groans. “Dad! I’m just excited! I’m going to have a little brother or sister! And that’s awesome and amazing because you’re like the world’s best father and so it makes perfect sense to spread that around.”

Tom tells himself that he is _not_ blushing. “Sure, kid. You want to tell me what you found out or what?”

“Right, okay. So, adopting a werewolf is pretty much impossible. Because not only are werewolves generally healthier and harder to kill, but they also have packs. So, even if a child’s parents are killed, the pack just adopts them. I mean, if anything were to happen to Laura and Jonathan, God forbid, Talia and Aaron would raise their kids, or Derek and I would . . . or we’d share, whatever, you get my point.”

“I do,” Tom confirms with a nod.

“Adopting a human child, uh . . .” Stiles rubs a hand over the back of his head. “Let’s just say that preliminary research makes that look dicey.”

Tom gives him a questioning look.

“Most private adoption agencies won’t consider werewolves as viable options,” Stiles says, “and even foster agencies are a little leery of them, and those who wouldn’t be leery of werewolves would probably _still_ give the side-eye to, you know, Peter. I mean. What with the murder and the clinical insanity and all.”

Tom opens his mouth to point out that since Peter had been cleared of all charges, technically it would be illegal to discriminate against him. But then he remembers who he’s dealing with. Stiles never researches anything halfway. There are lots of reasons an adoption might not go through, and proving discrimination could be impossible. If Stiles says it’s not an option, then it’s not an option. “Okay,” he says, “but I know you didn’t assemble a twenty page paper including pie charts to tell me that.”

“Right,” Stiles says. “See, then there’s the third category. Non-human, but non-werewolf children.”

“There can’t be many of those.”

“No, there aren’t,” Stiles says, “and because of that, they almost always fall into this gray area, this . . . unadoptable zone. There are so few of them that there’s no system to deal with them, but they _do_ exist. There are shifters who don’t pack like werewolves do, like werefoxes. There are banshees and wendigoes. Sometimes even the children of Druids are considered ‘non-human’ enough that it’s hard to find human parents to adopt them.”

“So what happens to these children?” Tom asks.

“Well, a lot of them just bounce around. But as it happens, there are a few group homes that specialize in their care. There’s one in . . . that city that has the Golden Gate Bridge, so that’s where I’d start.” Stiles sees his father’s look and huffs out a sigh. “Page twelve. But I worked hard on that, so you should read the whole thing.”

“I will,” Tom says, smiling. He reaches out and tousles his son’s hair. “I do appreciate it. How would you feel about a little fox brother or sister?”

“Oh my God, like it would be the cutest thing ever,” Stiles says.

Tom laughs. “Well, I’ll see what I can do.”

“There, uh, there’s one more thing you should probably know.” Stiles fidgets a little and says, “I didn’t find any data on this from the non-human adoption side, but human adoption agencies at least are heavily biased towards married couples. Because, you know, permanence and all that.” Hastily, he continues, “I’m not saying that you and Peter _couldn’t_ adopt because you’re not married, I’m just saying, it might hurt your chances.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to him about it.” It’s funny-but-not-funny, because in the past year of discussing adoption, marriage had never been brought up. Tom had had a feeling that it might be an issue, but he didn’t want to say anything, didn’t want to spook Peter, who still wore his wedding ring. Tom had stopped wearing his after he had moved into the Hale house, but Peter hadn’t, and Tom had never wanted to press the issue.

“I think – you know, I think he’s going to be okay,” Stiles says. “Knowing him, he’ll just be like, ‘of course we should be married, I don’t know why it’s taken you so long to ask’.”

Tom gives a snort. “That is a strong possibility. Don’t worry about it, okay? We’ll get it sorted.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Peter leafs through the extensive booklet of information on adoption that Stiles has produced, and feels that familiar warmth in his chest, not quite the fierce love of one’s own child, but the quiet fondness for his nephew. “Stiles is as impressive as always.”

“Yeah, he did that to get out of looking after the twins, so don’t be too impressed with him,” Tom replies.

“That’s really more impressive, to be honest . . .” Peter has always liked people who have ulterior motives to helping out.

Tom just rolls his eyes. Since Peter is intent on reading the entire book, he’s barely listening as Tom summarizes what Stiles told him about non-human adoptions, group homes, a system that has no idea how to cope with banshees and wendigoes. He tunes back in as Tom is saying, “The system does seem to have a lot of favoritism in place when it comes to couples who are married, rather than simply partners. I think it might be a holdover from before gay marriage was legal, to be honest. They could say they only accepted married couples and eliminate all the gays and lesbians without being accused of discrimination. Anyway, it’s something we might want to think about, if we don’t want to get turned down.”

Peter’s silent for a long minute, rolling that around in his head. “I’m sorry, but did you actually ask me to marry you anywhere in there, or did you think you could sneak it under the radar by talking about prejudice and probability?”

Tom rubs his hand over the back of his head and makes that cute embarrassed face that Peter loves so much. “It’s not _necessary_ , I was just saying – ” He sees the look on Peter’s face and clears his throat. “Want to get married?”

Peter opens his mouth to say yes, but then hesitates. “Do you?”

He expects more hedging, but Tom just nods and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Well, all right then.” Peter lets out a breath. He looks down at his left hand, at the wedding ring to Olivia that still graces his finger. Then he slides it off and tucks it away into a pocket.

“You don’t have to,” Tom says.

“I know. And if you weren’t the sort of person who would say that, I wouldn’t be with you. But Olivia is dead. She’s been dead for ten years. She’ll always be my mate, but she can’t be my wife anymore.” He looks at his bare finger and squelches the urge to reach for the ring, to give himself that reassurance that it’s still in his pocket. “Nothing big, though. I couldn’t . . . handle that.”

“I wouldn’t want it that way either,” Tom assures him. “Just something quiet at city hall is fine with me.”

“Don’t think we can get away with not telling the pack, though,” Peter says. “They would throw three different kinds of fits.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

The wedding is short and sweet. Rather than going to city hall, they have a justice of the peace come out to the den. The pack is there, but nobody else, and it’s a little bittersweet because the kids are all leaving to go back to school the next day. Peter wanted to do it before they left, but that was easy enough, without a lot of frills.

Stiles has made a lot of food, of course, and there’s a party, but it’s on the quieter side. They stuff their faces and play some board and card games. Everyone goes to bed early. There’s the usual fuss in the morning getting everyone off to school. Tom sees Peter fiddling with the new ring a few times, but he doesn’t seem to be in any distress over it.

That being done, Tom sits down with the information on the adoption agencies and begins what he’ll later call ‘The One Hundred Days of Paperwork’. He’s familiar with paperwork – police work involves a lot more of it than people realize – but this seems ridiculous. There are background checks and home inspections, drug testing and financial reviews. There’s a mental health screening which Peter somehow passes with flying colors. “Fake it ‘til you make it,” is Peter’s response when Tom asks him how it went.

There are reference letters and physical exams to make sure they’re not in danger of dropping dead. It goes on for what feels like forever. But finally, they’re certified and approved. Tom calls the group home in San Francisco – ‘New Beginnings’, it’s called – and speaks with the adoption coordinator. Their brief conversation gives him the feeling that she’s thrilled to hear from someone, and he remembers what Stiles had said about how these kids are often considered unadoptable.

“We do have dossiers on each of the children here, of course, but we really recommend that you come down and meet them,” the coordinator, whose name is Sharon, says. “It’s just so hard to get a sense of who they are from a sheet of paper or a computer screen.”

“Absolutely,” Tom says. “We’d love to come down.”

“Did you have any, er, preferences? To age or gender?”

She sounds a little wary, so Tom is careful in how he answers. “Gender doesn’t matter. Age, I guess we’d prefer someone younger, but it would depend a lot on the child.”

“We don’t have anyone under the age of six,” she says, somewhat anxiously.

“Oh, that’s fine. I mean ‘younger’ as in ‘doesn’t have a driver’s license yet’.”

Sharon laughs. “Okay. How about Monday?”

“Monday sounds great. It’ll take us a few hours to drive down. Early afternoon okay, say, one o’clock?”

“Perfect.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

“As you can see, we have children of all ages here,” Sharon says, as she shows them through what was obviously a rec room. There are several tables set up with coloring books or crafts, a reading nook, and an area with a variety of toys. And there are, indeed, children ranging from as young as six all the way up to a group of teenagers gathered around a movie.

Sharon starts talking about what sort of children they take in and where they came from, and before a few minutes have gone by, Peter loses interest and starts wandering around the room. Tom keeps half an eye on him but doesn’t intervene. He knows everything Sharon says, of course, thanks to Stiles’ prodigious research, but he knows it’s her job to give the spiel, so he lets her talk.

While she’s telling him about the screening process and the therapists and the supervision, Tom watches Peter. The werewolf prowls around the craft tables for a minute, leaning over shoulders to see what the children are doing, but doesn’t interfere. Finally, he sits down at a small table in the toy area, where there’s a sullen-looking girl playing with blocks. Well, ‘playing’ isn’t really the right word. There are a few of them on the table, and a big box of them, but she’s just got one in each hand and occasionally smacks them together.

Peter doesn’t talk to her or ask what she’s doing. He just takes some of the blocks and starts building a tower. It’s a simple thing, four walls and then a roof and then another four walls –

– and then the girl lashes out with one hand and knocks it down.

“Oh,” Sharon says, her voice tinged with distress, and she makes a move as if to go over.

“Hang on,” Tom says, watching. Peter is completely unfazed by the girl’s behavior. He simply starts rebuilding the tower. Her scowl deepens and she knocks it over again. He starts again. And again. And again. It never gets more than three levels high before she reaches out and sends it all crashing down. But Peter just keeps starting over.

Nearly ten minutes and twice as many towers have gone by before the girl reaches out, picks up a block, and sets it on top of Peter’s half-built tower. He pays her no mind, and keeps building. She adds another block. He puts one underneath it to stabilize her addition. Another minute later, and they’re just building it together. Inevitably, it gets too high and starts to wobble, and then a minute later it falls.

Tom sees Sharon’s mouth tighten, like she’s waiting for an outburst, but Peter just chuckles and starts again, and after a moment, the girl’s mouth curves in a hesitant smile.

“Oh,” Sharon says again, sounding like she’s been kicked in the stomach.

“Who is that?” Tom finally asks.

“That – her name is Malia,” Sharon says. “Malia Tate. She's a werecoyote. She came here about six months ago, and that – that’s the first time I’ve seen her smile. She . . .” Sharon stops to take a breath, and regains her professional attitude. “She lost her family in a car accident that the WLO orchestrated. Malia escaped, but the trauma . . . she wound up locked into her shifted form and stayed that way for three years, living feral in the woods, before somebody found her.”

“How old is she?” Tom asks.

“She would have just turned eight about a month ago,” Sharon says. “She’s very . . . volatile, and it’s made her difficult to place. She’s gone home with two families but come back both times. Just came back last week, in fact. She doesn’t talk very much; in fact, I’ve seen her go weeks without saying a word. And her temper, as you can see . . . her outbursts can be somewhat unpredictable.”

“She’s perfect,” Tom says, before he even realizes that he’s about to say it. He’s watching Peter again, playing with the wordless girl and her blocks.

“It won’t – I want you to understand that it won’t be easy – ”

“I never expected or wanted easy,” Tom says. “I wanted somebody that Peter would understand, and somebody who would understand him. He went through a long time just like her, after he lost his mate. We’ll take care of her. She won’t come back to your facility this time. That’s a promise.”

It looks like Sharon might cry, but after a moment to gather herself, she says, “I’ll go get the paperwork.”

Tom nods. He steps over to Peter and rests a hand on his shoulder, watching Peter arrange the blocks. “There’s going to be some paperwork to fill out. I’m going to go make a quick call. You’ll be all right here?”

“Mm,” is all Peter says in response, not looking up.

As he steps outside, Tom is suddenly reminded of how Stiles had come home with a puppy once. He had gone to the animal shelter with Scott and somehow conned the staff into letting him adopt one (that or he outright stole it; Tom hadn’t questioned overmuch after finding the hapless pooch a new home). They hadn’t technically intended to go home with a new daughter today. It was just supposed to be a tour. But it feels so incredibly _right_ , and given Peter’s focus, Tom doubts he could tear him away.

His finger hovers over his phone for a few moments as he debates who to call. He needs to call Stiles, because Stiles is his son, and he’s been insanely excited about this process. But he also feels like he should call Talia, because she’s the alpha, and Peter’s brother. After a few moments, he dials his son.

“Hey, Daddy-O,” Stiles says brightly, answering on the second ring. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going well. Is Talia around?”

“She’s in her study. Why, did she not answer her phone?”

“No, I just need to talk to you both at once.”

Stiles immediately catches on, and Tom realizes he should have called Talia, who would have also caught on, but probably wouldn’t have started shouting in his ear. “Oh my God! You adopted somebody! Oh my God it’s just like that time I came home with a puppy and you whupped my ass – ”

“Stiles,” Tom says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Will you please go get Talia and then put the phone on speaker?”

There are several loud thuds and then a rapid knock, followed by Stiles shouting more. “Talia! My dad’s on the phone and he wants it on speaker and you know what that means!”

A few moments later, Talia’s voice comes over the line, notably calmer and with just a hint of laughter. “Hello, Tom. How are things going?”

“Things are going fine. Could you – ”

“Who did you adopt?!” Stiles shouts. “Boy or girl? How old? Is it a shifter? How’s Peter taking it? Does he – ”

“Stiles, for God’s sake!” Tom says, hoping he doesn’t sound as desperate as he feels. “Her name is Malia. She’s eight years old, and she’s a werecoyote, and Peter’s fine, and I have paperwork to fill out and I don’t want to be here until midnight so will you please just let me tell you the reason I called!”

“It wasn’t to tell me I had a little sister?” Stiles says, then bursts out, “Oh my God! I have a little sister!”

Talia is audibly laughing now. “What is it, Tom?”

“Malia is very skittish,” Tom says. “She’s had a difficult life. I’d like to bring her to the den tonight, but it would probably be best if there aren’t a lot of people there.”

“Sure,” Talia says. “Laura and Jonathan can eat at their place and I’ll pack the rest of the kids back to their house.”

“Not me,” Stiles objects.

“No, not you,” Tom and Talia say in unison. Tom continues, “You’re her brother, and of course I want you there. Derek can stay too, along with Talia and Aaron. I just don’t want her to get mobbed, that’s all. She’s not very . . . friendly.”

Talia gives a snort of laughter and says, “Peter’s found a kindred spirit, I take it. I’ll see if Laura can watch Hope and Brian. We don’t want screeching werewolf babies adding to the festivities either, I’m sure. What time should we expect you?”

“Well, the drive here took us about four hours, so I’d say around seven or eight, probably,” Tom says. “We’ll probably stop for a bite to eat, so don’t wait for us to have dinner. Okay?”

“Okay. See you soon, love you!” Stiles shouts, clearly too excited to keep his shit together.

Tom shakes his head a little and goes back inside. Sharon hustles over and they walk over to where Peter is sitting with Malia. Someone else is using the blocks, and Malia is coloring now, in that she’s using a crayon on paper. All she’s drawing are jagged lines. Peter is offering her crayons but not trying to give her artistic advice.

“Malia,” Sharon says, smiling, “let me introduce you. This is Tom Stilinski, and his husband, Peter Hale. Say hello.”

“Don’t wanna,” Malia says, not looking up.

“Malia, is it?” Peter says, and holds up his hand in front of her face, leveling his index finger at her nose. “We’re going to take you home.”

It’s probably not the _subtlest_ way to break the news, which amuses Tom since Peter is capable of such subtlety on a given day. But there are times when you just have to be straightforward, and Peter has clearly decided that this is one of them. Malia clearly doesn’t agree, because she drops her crayons and then clamps her teeth down on Peter’s finger.

“Malia!” Sharon gasps, but Peter takes this in stride. He doesn’t make a noise, doesn’t pull away. He just reaches out with his other hand and flicks her nose.

“No biting,” he says.

Malia sulkily lets go. Peter pulls his hand back, the wound healing.

“Shall we?” he says, glancing up at Tom.

Tom tries not to roll his eyes all the way to the county line. “We can’t just walk off with her, Peter. There’s paperwork to fill out.”

“You said you were going to do that.”

“I had to call your sister first. You know, the alpha? I thought she might appreciate a head’s-up.”

Peter’s nose wrinkles. “I suppose so. Well, you can do that while I put together Malia’s things. Presuming you have things, little one?”

Malia growls. “I don’t want them.”

Tom tries to intervene here, because Peter is just nodding like that makes perfect sense, and this is apparently his daughter, too. “Why not?”

“They’re not really mine,” Malia says, jaw setting in a mulish expression. “They got them for me but they’re all wrong.”

Tom considers questioning, but he can easily picture the well-meaning staff getting Malia cute dresses and dolls when she probably would have rather had jeans and – actually, he’s not sure what sort of toy she would want. But Barbie probably isn’t it. “Okay. Why don’t you at least pack up a few things, like a set or two of clothes?” He sees that she’s about to refuse, and continues, “That way we’ll have some time for you to pick out some new things that you like.”

Malia gives him a suspicious scowl, but then says, “Okay.”

Tom watches fondly as Peter extends his formerly bitten hand to her. She’s still scowling, but she takes it, and drags him off in the direction of her room. He gestures to Sharon, who takes him to her office.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	2. Chapter 2

 

There’s less paperwork than he would have anticipated, since they’ve already been screened by the organization and cleared to adopt. He fills it out dutifully, leaving blanks for where Peter’s signature is also required. It takes about an hour to get everything done. Peter decides to sit in the back next to Malia on the drive home. She has a backpack full of belongings, but there isn’t much.

Tom doesn’t want the car ride home to turn into a long, awkward silence, so he asks Malia, “Do you like music?” and gets a shrug. But he’s come prepared with several albums of Kidz Bop. Stiles loved it when he was a kid, so he’s hoping that Malia is not an exception. She actually seems to, in that she stops scowling for a little while.

“How about we stop for a burger?” he asks, as they go through Woodland. They’ve still got a couple hours to go, but there won’t be any more big towns.

“That sounds good,” Peter says.

“Malia, do you like burgers?” Tom says, and gets the by-now-expected shrug. It’s quite a change from Stiles, who could always be trusted to have an opinion about everything. But Tom’s experience is that almost every child loves fast food, so he pulls into a drive-through and gets her a Happy Meal. She eats all of it – almost up to and including the toy, which Tom rescues at the last minute – and then falls asleep for the rest of the drive. He glances at her face in the rearview mirror and is struck with that feeling of certainty, of _rightness_ , again.

She wakes up as they pull onto the bumpy road that leads to the Hale house, and she’s growling in the back of her throat as she regains her bearings. “No worries, little one,” Peter soothes her. “We’re almost home.”

Her growling settles down, and Peter continues talking, “We live with my sister and her husband, and their two children. And there are other people who lives in the houses right by us. Other people who are in my pack. Have you ever met a werewolf before, Malia?”

“I dunno,” Malia says.

“Well, you’re about to meet a whole bunch of them,” Peter says.

Tom pulls up out front and tries to squelch a sudden pang of anxiety. Everything with his relationship with Peter has gone so smoothly – surprisingly smoothly – up to this point. Now he’s introducing this new variable, this unpredictable, skittish, half-feral child. And let’s be fair, as much as he loves Stiles and Talia, they can be a little . . . much. He hopes that he’s not making a huge mistake. They could have brought Malia back to his house for the night, but Peter had been adamant that she meet the pack right away, so she would fully understand what a pack was.

Peter’s hand curls around his elbow, nearly making him jump. He looks over to see Peter arching his eyebrows at him, while Malia peeks out from behind him. Peter smiles, and Tom’s nerves dial back a little bit. It’s still so rare to see Peter smile that it immediately makes him feel better. “Okay, let’s do this,” Tom says, and walks in through the door. “Hey, we’re home!”

“We’re in the kitchen!” Stiles shouts back, and Tom thinks that he’s going to give his kid a medal for that. He knows how eager Stiles is to meet Malia – but Stiles knows how intimidating it can be to walk into a room and have a bunch of people staring at you. Plus he’s obviously been baking, and the house smells fantastic. Since Stiles rarely bakes at the main house anymore, preferring his own kitchen, he’s doing it purely for that reason.

So Tom heads in with Peter behind him and Malia behind Peter. Stiles is at the counter, making cookies. Talia and Derek are both sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and working on a crossword puzzle together. All three of them look at the way Malia is peeking around Peter’s hip, and it’s obvious that they’re all suppressing the desire to squeal.

“So, little one,” Peter says, “this is my sister, Talia. She’s the alpha of our pack. That’s Stiles,” he continues with a gesture, “Tom’s son, and his mate, Derek, who’s Talia’s son.”

Malia scowls at all of them in equal measure before turning a wary gaze to Talia. “I don’t like your name. It’s too close to mine.”

Talia obviously finds her pint-sized scowl adorable, but she manages to bite back a smile and avoid insulting the child. “Well, Stiles calls Peter ‘Uncle P’, so maybe you could call me ‘Auntie T’.”

Malia’s nose wrinkles and she declares, “I don’t like that either.”

“How about cookies, do you like those?” Stiles asks, as Talia tries not to laugh.

Malia eyes him suspiciously. “Maybe,” she says, but then adds, “but just because I like your cookies doesn’t mean I like you.”

“Noted,” Stiles says, putting two on a napkin and setting them on the counter where she could get to them, rather than handing them to her directly. They’re old-fashioned chocolate chip. Malia takes them, sniffs them delicately, and then nibbles at an edge. Then she abruptly crams both of them in her mouth at once. “So?” Stiles prompts.

Mouth full, Malia mumbles, “I don’t hate them.”

“I’ll take it,” Stiles says cheerfully.

Tom sees Peter mask a yawn, and says, “Well, I think we’re going to take her upstairs and get her settled in. We’ll see you all in the morning.”

“Night!” Stiles says, and Derek and Talia echo him.

Tom ushers Peter and Malia up the stairs and over to what used to be Cora’s room. He nearly stops in the doorway, surprised by what he sees. They had gotten some furniture, but the room had been pretty bare when they had left that morning. Since they hadn’t technically been planning to bring someone home with them, it hadn’t worried him.

But his phone call had been six hours previous, and he can see his son’s fingerprints all over what the room looks like now. He hadn’t much to go on beyond ‘eight year old girl’, but there’s sheets and blankets on the bed now, a nightstand and a bedside lamp, a bookshelf filled with books that an eight year old might like. There are even a few pictures on the wall, one of a unicorn and one of some kittens and puppies. On the bed sits a brand new plush wolf.

“The room is different,” Peter says, frowning and scenting the air cautiously.

Tom reaches out and squeezes his shoulder to ground him. “Yeah, Stiles must have moved some things in.”

“Ah. Stiles.” Peter takes a breath and lets it out. “Of course.”

Tom decides to give him a minute, so he gestures to Malia, “So, this room is for you.”

“I don’t like it,” Malia declares.

“Okay,” Tom says, “which parts do you not like?”

Malia eyes him warily. “All the parts,” she says.

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Tom says. “Tomorrow, we’re going to do some shopping to get you some clothes and things, so anything you don’t like about the room, you can think about tonight and then tell us about tomorrow. How does that sound?”

“Okay,” Malia says. She still seems suspicious, but at least she’s not scowling.

“Here’s the bathroom,” Tom says, gesturing. “Why don’t you brush your teeth and everything, okay? And then you can get some sleep. It’s getting late.”

“Okay,” Malia says again, and even lets Tom get her nightgown out of her bag and hand it to her. She brushes her teeth and changes but comes out with her hair still a mess. Tom tries to comb it out and she snarls at him.

“Honey, if you sleep with it tangled, it’ll just be more tangled tomorrow,” Tom says firmly. “Would you rather Peter do it?”

Malia scowls but says, “No.”

“Okay, then just hold still for twenty seconds and I’ll do it.”

“Fiiiiiiine. Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen – ”

Tom gets the comb through her hair in sixteen seconds, which is probably a good thing since she’s already pulling away. “Okay, now, me and Peter’s room is right on the other side of the hallway, so if you need anything, anything at all, you can come get one of us. Okay?”

Malia flounces into bed and sticks out her tongue with just a flash of fang. Tom tries not to laugh. He turns out the lamp and then leaves the room, leaving the door ajar. Peter is waiting in the doorway of their room, and he slides an arm around Tom’s waist and presses a kiss against his temple as he walks past him.

“Jeez, I’m beat,” Tom says, stripping off his shirt. “I’m going to go take a shower and then hit the sack.”

“Shall I join you?” Peter asks, looking interested.

Tom arches his eyebrows. “No. If Malia needs something, one of us has to be available,” he says. Peter pouts, and Tom laughs. “Welcome to fatherhood.”

“Mm. I rather like it so far, despite the interruption of . . . other pursuits.” Peter leans in for a kiss. “I’ll shower in the morning.”

“Okay.” Tom heads into the bathroom. The sight of the pint-sized toothbrush is enough to get him grinning again. He takes a quick shower, washes his hair, and emerges to find that Peter has fallen asleep curled on his side. He’s struck, as he often is, by how peaceful Peter looks when he’s asleep. He pulls back the blankets and climbs in next to him. Peter wakes up momentarily, which almost always happens. He’s an incredibly light sleeper. Tom had felt bad about it for the first several months, for the fact that Peter woke up any time he tossed or turned or got up to get a drink. He even offered to sleep in different beds if it would help. But Peter said he didn’t mind; he had been that way as long as he could remember, and it’s never seemed to affect the quality of his sleep.

Which is probably why Peter wakes up first when their door creaks open, and he’s already talking as Tom is still fumbling his way back to consciousness. “What is it, little one?”

“I don’t like the room,” Malia says, her voice approaching a whine.

“All right,” Peter says. “Do you want to sleep in here?”

“I don’t like this one either,” Malia says.

“Honey, what don’t you like?” Tom says. “Let’s figure out what’s wrong, okay?”

“It smells wrong,” she says. “Everything is too soft.”

Peter climbs out of bed. He heads on over to the window and opens it up, letting the cool night air in. “You slept outside for a long time, didn’t you?” he asks, and she sniffles and nods. “Does that help?”

“Yeah,” she says.

Peter sits down underneath the window and pats the floor next to him. “And the bed is too soft because you’re used to lying on the ground. So come sit here with me.”

Malia ducks her chin but heads over and curls up on the floor next to him, pillowing her head against his thigh.

“You must not have slept well at New Beginnings,” Tom says.

“I _tried_ to tell them,” Malia says, and her voice wobbles. “But they kept telling me I’d get used to it. If they found me sleeping on the floor, they’d get upset. They said ‘you’re human now, Malia, you have to be human now’. I don’t want to be human. I want to be a coyote again. But nobody will let me.”

“Little one, you’ll always be a coyote,” Peter says. “You’re a coyote and a human. You can be both. I promise.”

Malia sniffles. “Pinky promise?”

“Pinky promise.” Peter hooks pinkies with her. “We’ll talk more about this in the morning. You get some sleep.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

When they wake up the next morning, Peter and Malia are still on the floor. Tom offered to sleep down there with them, but Peter had told him not to bother. “Unlike me, you’ll wake up with knots in your back and a cricked neck,” Peter said.

“Are you calling me old?” Tom asked, and Peter laughed.

Peter wakes when Malia starts fidgeting. He smoothes her hair down, and she snarls at him. “Easy now, little one,” he says. Tom stirs at that, as Malia blinks sleepily, her face changing from neutrality into the typical scowl. Peter pokes her in the ribs. She snarls, so he pokes her again, and she giggles. “Let’s get you cleaned up and dressed.”

“I’ll go see where my other miscreant is at,” Tom says, climbing out of bed.

“All right.” Peter ushers Malia back into her room and takes out the clothes she had packed. It’s a T-shirt with flowers on it and a pair of jeans. Malia starts to whine as soon as he takes them out of the bag.

“I don’t _like_ them,” she says.

“Well, just put them on for now and we’ll go straight out to get you some new ones,” Peter says. Malia continues to whine, but at least she gets dressed. She perks up when they get downstairs and tilts her head to one side, scenting the air. “Yes, it seems that Stiles has cooked up some breakfast. Hungry?”

“Yeah,” she says, and even takes his hand as he steers her towards the table.

Stiles is there with Tom and Aaron. Talia is already at work by now, and Derek always avoids the kitchen when Stiles is cooking meat. Even after all these years, it’s a gut impulse he never quite gets over. The new house, where Stiles normally does his cooking, has a special ventilation system that helps, but the main house doesn’t.

“This is my sister’s mate, Aaron,” Peter says, pulling a chair out for Malia. She gives him the usual wary look, but Aaron has a tendency to look like an enormous teddy bear, so she doesn’t clam up like she has in the past.

“Good morning, Malia,” Stiles says, grinning as he puts a plate down in front of her. It’s got bacon and a few slices of cheese, and two pieces of buttered toast. Malia dives in without a word. Stiles is rocking back and forth on his heels, barely able to contain his excitement. “Can I go shopping with you guys?”

“Not this time,” Tom says, and Stiles wilts. “Next time, okay? Don’t you have classes today?”

“Well, yeah, but this is much more important,” Stiles says. “I have classes every day. Or most days. I don’t get a new little sister every day.”

“True,” Peter says. “I’m surprised my nieces haven’t been all over us, to be honest.”

“If Cora wasn’t in LA, I don’t think we would have been able to stop her,” Aaron says, laughing. “Fortunately, Laura is lower-key. But she’ll be here for dinner tonight, so it’ll be a little more rowdy. I’ll see if I can keep the noise level to a dull roar.”

“Well, since I can’t go shopping with you guys today, I’ll have to make something awesome for dinner,” Stiles says. “Malia, what’s your favorite food?”

Malia looks up, then ducks her head and mumbles, “Pizza.”

Peter frowns, hearing the way her heart thuds in her chest at that answer. “Why are you lying?”

Malia’s response is to kick him hard in the shins.

Peter snarls at her.

“Calm down,” Tom says to both of them. He squeezes Peter’s shoulder, a grounding motion. To Malia, he says, “If you’re upset or angry, that’s okay, but it’s not okay to kick or hit people. Understood?”

Malia’s face screws up like she’s about to cry. Tom reaches out and smoothes down her hair.

“We’re not angry,” he says, “but hurting other people isn’t okay. Okay? Now apologize to Peter.”

Malia nods. “’M sorry,” she mumbles.

“No worries, little one,” Peter says. “Bruise is already gone.”

“So why were you upset?” Tom asks. “We just want to know what you like to eat. You seem to have enjoyed the bacon.”

“They told me it was pizza,” Malia says, snuffling. “I told them it wasn’t but they said it was.”

Tom frowns a little, but keeps smoothing down her hair. “Why would they say that?”

“Because it’s something a human would like,” Malia says. “I had to stop being a coyote. They told me what I had to like and what I had to wear and how I had to sit. They never listened.”

“Well, we’re going to listen,” Tom says. “So what is your favorite food, sweetie?”

Malia sniffles and looks between him and Peter uncertainly. “Deer?”

“Oh, deer,” Tom says, and there’s a note in his voice that’s somewhat relieved. “That’s easy enough.”

“We’ve got some venison in the freezer,” Stiles says.

“No, that won’t do at all,” Peter says, shaking his head. “I think Malia was referring to deer a little more fresh. So, what say we go get one? There are plenty in the woods around Beacon Hills. We’ve hunted them down before.”

Malia’s eyes go wide. “Can we? Can we really?”

“Certainly,” Peter says, “but it would be better to wait until we have a few more wolves to help. I can teach you about flanking positions later.”

“But first, shopping,” Tom says, gently drawing them back on track.

Malia nods and gives him a wary look. “I get a new room?”

“We can get you some different things for the room,” Tom corrects. “I can’t just pull a room out of my hat.”

Stiles looks crushed. “You don’t like the things we bought?”

“Malia’s just feeling a little claustrophobic,” Peter intervenes. “She slept outside for a long time.”

“Oh,” Stiles says, and then brightens. Tom gives him a questioning look, and he immediately turns away to busy himself at the kitchen counter. After some deliberation, Tom decides it’s not worth grilling his son on whatever cockamamie scheme he’s hatching. Malia can just sleep in their room until she’s adjusted.

An hour later, they’re standing in the girls’ clothing section at a department store, and Malia has that angry scowl back on her face. She doesn’t like _anything_. Tom thought that maybe she’d prefer more boyish clothing, but she hates that, too. Which wouldn’t bother him if she could explain what she wanted or why she didn’t like what they suggested.

Tom makes himself stop and really think about the problem. Malia was a coyote for three years, and she’s still trying to adjust. The problem isn’t with aesthetics. It has to be with the fabric itself, and the restriction of movement.

There aren’t a lot of summer clothes out yet, but he finds a stand of cute little sundresses and brings one of them over to where she’s scowling at denim. “Here, how about this?”

For the first time, Malia doesn’t immediately reject the offering. “Maybe.” Her tone is wary, but at least she’s willing to try it on, which is miles above where they were. She takes it into the dressing room and comes out swinging her arms back and forth. “It’s okay.”

“Better than the other stuff?” Tom asks, and she nods. “How about the color?” he adds, and she shrugs. It seems to fit her okay, so he grabs every one in her size, for a total of four dresses in different patterns. They’re going to need to hit up more than one store if they don’t want to do laundry twice a week.

She refuses to change back into her other clothes, so Tom has them ring it up while she’s wearing it, along with a few packs of underwear and some cute things for her hair. She doesn’t like socks – or shoes, for that matter – so he buys her some cheap flip flops. He has no doubt that she’ll only wear them when he absolutely insists. That will be fine, at least for now.

“What sort of thing do you like to play with?” he asks, as they head to the next store.

Emboldened by her previous successes, Malia declares, “Squirrels!”

Peter gives a snort of laughter. “What about on rainy days when all the squirrels are hiding?”

Malia purses her lips and thinks about it. “I don’t know. I would just watch the rain.”

“Well, we’ll have to find out, then,” Peter says, but this doesn’t stop him from steering Tom and Malia into a pet store to buy a number of soft squeak toys for Malia to maul.

“Squirrels for _inside_ ,” Malia says, seeming awed.

Tom shakes his head at the fact that he’s buying his new daughter dog toys, and reminds himself that he’s living in a werewolf pack now. They don’t need to worry too much about toys right now. There are a variety already at the den, plus books and videos and everything one could need to keep a child entertained.

It’s mid-afternoon when they get back to the house, and although they might be having venison for dinner, that hasn’t stopped Stiles from baking bread. Tom stops inside and just breathes for a minute, before the group of them proceed onto the kitchen. Malia is whining about being hungry, and Tom is sure that Stiles already has a snack prepared for her. “I’ll bring this stuff up to your room,” he says, grabbing one of the bags from Peter. “Be right – ”

“Hey, Dad, wait a sec,” Stiles says. “We moved her bed and everything.”

Tom gives his son a suspicious look. “You moved her bed?”

Stiles gives him a nod and a wide grin. “Because of what you said, about her being claustrophobic and all. I talked to Derek and Aaron and we set up some space for her down here that we thought she might like better.”

“Okay . . .” Tom can’t help but feel wary, given Malia’s reactions so far, but she’s perked up a little bit.

“Here, let me show you,” Stiles says to his new little sister. She trots after him. Tom is confused for a minute because he’s heading outside, but then he realizes that it’s actually a brilliant idea. The Hale house has a large screened in porch that they use as a dining room on nice days. Now he can see that the table and chairs have been moved out of it. They’ve moved the dresser and the bookcase downstairs, and instead of a bed there’s a nest of cushions and blankets.

It seems unwise, but it’s already April, and only getting warmer. Werewolves can tolerate extreme temperatures a lot better than humans, and Tom assumes that werecoyotes are the same way. With a few extra blankets, and maybe a heating pad to warm them up before bed, Malia should be fine on the porch. Sure, it’s not the most secure place in the world, but he doubts anyone is going to break into a werewolf den. Besides, from the way Peter is looking around, he’s already thinking about taking steps to prevent that.

“What do you think?” Stiles asks, crouching down so he’s on eye level with Malia.

“I can . . . sleep here?” Malia asks, looking around, uncertain.

“Yup! It’s all yours.”

“And . . . it’s okay?” Malia glances over her shoulder at Tom and Peter.

“If you like it, it’s fine,” Tom says.

“Thank you!” Malia throws herself onto the bed, rolling around on it so she can leave her scent all over it. Then she springs back to her feet. “Can we go get deer now? Can we?”

“Yes, little one,” Peter says, “I think that can be arranged.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look at me makin' stuff up~
> 
> Thank you so much for all your kind comments! <3

 

Derek puts up with Stiles muttering to himself for the first ten minutes as he flips through a folder of papers and occasionally consults his laptop. When it looks like he’s not going to work out whatever this is on his own, Derek walks over and gives his shoulders a squeeze. “What are you up to over here?”

“I sat down to do something quick and easy, and it turned into something prolonged and complicated, because of course it did, because this is my life,” Stiles says, flailing a little. Derek bites back a smile. “So, you know, Malia’s parents were killed by the WLO, right? And Peter asked me to check into it, make sure the people who did it were actually caught and prosecuted, et cetera. I figured, no problem, just find it in their files, verify the report, blah, blah. But it got . . . weird.”

“Weird how?” Derek takes his sketch book and sits down across from Stiles.

“Well, it was definitely the WLO. It’s in their internal files. But there’s not a lot of information about it, which actually isn’t unusual for them. They didn’t always do a lot of research; they shot first and asked questions never. But I want to be thorough, right? Because when the first dozen guys got caught, the big wigs basically tried to land _every_ murder at their door. Like, Kate especially, with all the murders they tried to pin on her, she would have had to travel faster than . . . a really fast thing.”

Derek tightens a little at the mention of his family’s killer, but nods. “Okay. I’ve heard of that in mob movies and stuff, too. When an enforcer gets caught, he’ll confess to a bunch of open cases, so the cops will stop looking for whoever did it.”

“Exactly.” Stiles pushes his papers aside and gets up to make tea. He always thinks better when he’s moving. “So I pulled the police report, just to give it a quick read through and make sure nothing jumped out at me and said ‘the person in jail for this didn’t do it’. And something weird struck me. I don’t think they knew Malia was a shifter. She got a missing persons report, right? And there’s no mention of her being able to shift, no description of her coyote form.”

“They might not have known. She was pretty young, right?”

“Four, yeah.”

“Most shifters learn how to take a full form when they’re toddlers, but not all.”

“Okay, but it gets weirder.” Stiles reaches for a tin of Earl Grey. “I don’t think her parents were shifters, either.”

“She might not have been their biological child. I mean, she’s not your dad and Peter’s.”

“True. But I’d have to dig a lot deeper to find that out.” Stiles waves this aside as he puts the kettle on to boil. “Her mom was driving, right? And she died of internal bleeding from the force of the steering wheel to the chest. Her dad was in the front passenger seat. He was knocked unconscious, and part of the door caved inward and severed his femoral artery, and he bled out.”

Derek frowns at this. “Which aren’t really injuries severe enough to kill any sort of shifter.”

“Exactly.” Stiles points at him with the teaspoon. “So I did a little bit of digging, went through their Facebook memorial pages, looked at the news from where they lived, all that jazz. There’s no mention of them being any sort of shifters, let alone coyotes.”

After a moment, Derek shrugs. “Okay. But again, Malia might not have been their biological child.”

“Right, but that’s not my point. If they weren’t shifters, and nobody knew that _she_ was a shifter, why the hell were they targeted by the WLO?”

Derek blinks. “That’s a very good question. Can we ask the guy who did it?”

“Woman, and no. Well, we could, but it wouldn’t get us anywhere.” Stiles chews on his lower lip and leans against the counter while he waits for the water to boil. “See, the thing is, most of the crimes that the WLO committed were, uh . . . shit, you know, when you hire someone from outside.”

“Contractors,” Derek supplies.

“Right, right, independent contractors. Only a few of them, like Kate and that woman up in Toledo, were actually _believers_. Most of them were just hired guns, and they got very few details in case they were caught. Like the guy who put the accelerant in your house, you know? He didn’t even know where it came from or why you guys were being targeted.” Stiles sees the look on Derek’s face and hastily adds, “Sorry, I mean, I don’t mean to be so cavalier about it, it’s just – ”

“It’s fine.” Derek lets out a breath. “I know that, that doing all the work you’ve done with the WLO has kind of, of inured you to it. It’s just – ”

“They were your family. I know.” Stiles rubs his hand over the back of Derek’s neck in a soothing gesture. The moment is broken when the kettle whistles, and he goes over to make the tea. After a long moment of silence, he says, “Anyway. This woman was convicted of six different murders on behalf of the WLO, but was actually already in jail on some other charges when the WLO’s files all came out. She’s just your average hired thug, and she won’t know anything about why the WLO wanted the Tate family killed.”

Derek nods and accepts his mug of tea. He’s silent for another long minute. “But to find out, you’d have to dig deep into the Tates, wouldn’t you. If Malia isn’t their child, whose is she? Was she the one being targeted, and if so, how did the WLO know about her?”

“Yeah. I’d have to ask a lot of uncomfortable questions and possibly upset a bunch of people. And if the WLO was targeting Malia – I don’t want her to ever think that what happened to her parents was her fault, you know?”

“Yeah. Though I don’t know how much we would need to tell her. She’s only eight years old.”

“I was eight when my mother died. Eight year olds are a lot smarter than you might give them credit for.” Stiles blew on the top of his tea to cool it. “I guess the question is whether or not it matters. The woman who did it is in jail, the people who hired it done are dead. We don’t have to worry about them coming after her again. Are the nitty gritty details really important?”

“I don’t know. Are you going to be able to let it go?”

Stiles deflates. “Damn you.”

“So, no?”

“Probably not. I just feel like maybe I should.”

Derek shakes his head. “I don’t think so. People in my family – not all of them, but a lot – we were happier, more comfortable, thinking what had happened to us had been a tragic accident. Knowing that it was murder wasn’t _easy_ , but it was _better_. You know? I think that finding out the truth is important, even when it hurts.”

“Yeah . . . you’re probably right about that. But still, I want it on record that I _tried_ to have self-control. You’re my witness.”

“Noted.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Tom still remembers coming home from the hospital with Claudia and Stiles, the day after he was born. He was so tiny and perfect, and the two of them just stared at him for hours on end, delighted and enthralled with the life they had made. The initial glow had worn off, of course, and there were sleepless nights and disgusting diapers and other less savory aspects of child-rearing. But it never quite went away. Even now, Tom sometimes looks at the man his son has become and has that same possessive well of pride, that feeling of _we made that_.

Things with Malia are different, for a lot of reasons, some more obvious than others. _Malia_ is different, about as different from Stiles as two children could get. She’s obviously feeling better now that she’s getting her feet underneath herself, but she’s still wary, skittish. She does much better when it’s just the three of them, although she’s cautiously warming up to Stiles, the purveyor of cookies. As soon as the rest of the family starts crowding her, she gets snarly or withdrawn.

The pack is naturally loud and boisterous, and Malia clearly doesn’t like it. Tyler is only a couple years younger than her, and emotionally they’re about on the same level. He’s a curious little boy, who keeps trying to hammer Malia with questions, which she clearly loathes. She gets snappish with him easily, and Tyler is too young to have ever learned how to deal with Peter when he was feral.

Peter is good at recognizing when Malia is about to reach her limit, though, and takes her out on a run to burn off some energy. Tom has to stay behind, which annoys him a little, but to be honest he’d had no delusions about the fact that he was going to end up being the responsible parent. He’s the one who reminds Malia to brush her teeth, who makes her wear her flip-flops if they’re going to be in a public place, who tells her to chew with her mouth shut. That’s not the sort of thing Peter is ever going to do. Peter relates better to her emotionally, and that’s fine.

He’s taken two weeks off from work, and they settle into a routine quickly. They get up around eight o’clock and have breakfast. As thrilled as Stiles is to have a younger sister, he hasn’t budged from his ‘approach me about food before ten AM and I’ll bite your head off’ stance. So it’s usually something simple like toast or cereal. Then he sits down with Malia and some books. They’ve been working on assessing where she is in terms of education, the answer to which seems to be ‘at the very beginning’. She can recognize letters but can’t read, and she looks at arithmetic problems like they have bigger teeth than she does.

Tom calls Sharon at New Beginnings to ask if Malia had been in school and is told no, she was too emotionally volatile and too far behind. They had a tutor working with her, Sharon says. Tom resists the urge to tell her to get their money back.

Malia doesn’t seem to mind the reading lessons, but she gets edgy and restless very quickly. They’ve found that she concentrates much better if they do it in short periods, interspersed with going for a run or playing with one of her stuffed toys. She wrestles with Peter, climbing all over him and growling him into submission, which Tom thinks is frankly one of the most adorable things he’s ever seen.

As the afternoon goes by, more and more pack members get home. Laura is doing her best to keep her own cubs corralled, but everyone wants to spend time with Malia. They’re working on games she can play with the other children which will keep her from getting snarly.

One helpful thing is that Malia has become fascinated with food. She hunted her own for a long time, and there wasn’t much in the way of variety. She doesn’t want to like ‘normal’ things, but can’t help but find Stiles’ vast array of possibilities intriguing. After the first two times she sneaks into the kitchen to sniff delicately at things in the pantry, Stiles gives her a tour and lets her pick out some things to try. Now every meal comes with one ‘Malia dish’. It can be somewhat interesting, since what Malia chooses rarely has anything to do with the rest of the meal. They’ll be having tacos and there will be a dish of cranberry sauce on the table. Stiles will have made roasted chickens and there will be a random bowl of cottage cheese. But it gets her interested in the process and less likely to insist on having deer at every meal, plus it gives her bonding time with Stiles, who obviously wants to spend time with her but is trying not to crowd her.

After dinner, they sit down for an hour or so of television. Tyler loves nature shows right now, and Tom figures that they’ll be educational for Malia, too. Then it’s bath time and story time – Stiles likes to read her the bedtime story and Malia says he does the best voices – and then bed time. Peter is sleeping on the porch with her for now, until she gets settled in. Tom’s not thrilled with sleeping alone, but he’s done it for a long time and he’ll survive.

He has to admit that he’s nervous about going back to work. Everything is going fairly well, but Peter can still be . . . Tom hates to use the word ‘unreliable’, but the fact is that Peter will sometimes lose track of time, wander off for no reason, or not notice little things like ‘pouring rain’. He’s been better about it lately – a lot better, and still improving. Tom figures he would probably be nervous even _without_ Peter’s past history. Leaving a child for the first time is always nerve-wracking. Besides, Talia will be around. She’s still working, but works mostly from home now, and plans to until the twins are three. Laura will be around as well. It’ll be fine.

He promises himself that he _won’t_ constantly text Peter to know what’s going on. He’ll make it at _least_ until lunch time.

Of course, that doesn’t stop Peter texting him at around ten thirty, saying, ‘Having fun and staying safe’ with a badly photoshopped picture of Malia riding a bear.

Tom snorts despite himself and texts back, ‘Did Stiles make that for you?’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Peter replies. ‘Malia’s made a new friend.’

Tom shakes his head in amusement, and then his phone rings and he has to deal with a call. But before he leaves the office, he texts Peter quickly with, ‘Thanks.’

‘For?’ Peter replies.

‘Not making a big deal out of me being nervous to leave her.’

Peter doesn’t reply to that for a while, and by the time he does, it’s after lunch. It comes with a picture of Malia eating a grilled cheese with a small bowl of tomato soup, and says, ‘Thank you. For trusting me to take care of her.’

‘No reason why I shouldn’t,’ Tom replies, and realizes in that moment that it’s one hundred percent true. Peter can be distant sometimes, can get distracted easily by thoughts of the past. He still sometimes has days where he doesn’t want anybody to touch him, where he just walks in the forest for hours and has to be reminded to come home and eat. But where Malia is concerned, Peter would die before he would let harm come to her. Even if that harm was something as simple as him forgetting to get her lunch. He’ll protect her from anything, including himself.

This thought is still in his mind when he gets home from work and finds that one of the chairs in the kitchen has been turned into kindling. Malia is happily mauling one of the pieces while Peter sits at the kitchen table on his laptop. “What happened here?” Tom asks.

“She stubbed her toe on the chair,” Peter says.

Tom looks at the kindling. He looks at Peter. “So . . . you murdered it.”

Peter’s gaze becomes somewhat shifty, like he knows he did something unreasonable but can’t actually bring himself to admit it. “Maybe.”

Tom has to bite back a smile. He leans over and drops a kiss onto the top of Peter’s head. “As long as Talia yells at you for breaking up the set and not me, okay. Let’s go see what Stiles is making for dinner.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

The first step of Stiles’ investigation is simultaneously obvious and impossible. He needs to know whether or not Malia was adopted. But the problem is that there’s nobody he can ask. She has no extended family. If she had, she never would have wound up in the system to be adopted. Her mother’s parents were both dead – one from cancer and one from kidney disease. Her father had never known his father, and his mother had committed suicide when he was twenty. Both of them were only children.

Still, one thing is telling – there’s no birth announcement for Malia. Even if the birthday they were told isn’t accurate, there’s nothing under either of her parents’ names in any newspaper he can find in their area.

He also manages to confirm that the police had no idea that Malia was a shifter. His father calls and asks the man who had coordinated the search, and nobody had been looking for a coyote. If either of her parents had been shifters, they certainly would have been.

But somebody must know. They didn’t live in a bubble. So Stiles expands his search. Carol Tate had been a stay-at-home mom, but Andrew Tate had had a job as the manager at a janitorial service. The problem is, that was in Oregon. Stiles prefers to do this sort of thing face-to-face, but he’s got school, and he can’t just drop everything.

“This could wait until summer, you know,” Tom points out to his son. “There’s no urgency to it.”

“Sure, it could,” Stiles agrees, and they both drop it because they know how abominable Stiles is at letting go of anything. So he calls the new manager of the janitorial service, who had never met Andrew Tate but at least is able to put him on with someone who had. Stiles introduces himself and says that he’s looking into the circumstances of the man’s death.

Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. Not everyone has heard of him, and not everyone loves what he did. This man obviously has no idea who he is, but he also isn’t averse to talking. “Thought it was those anti-werewolf folks.”

“Yes, it was, but we’re not sure which one. The woman who confessed might not have actually been guilty, and we want to make sure that everyone serves appropriate time.”

“Well, okay,” the man says. “I have to admit, it didn’t make sense to me. Can’t imagine why anti-werewolf people would have gone after the Tates. They had nothing to do with any of that.”

“It might have been related to their daughter,” Stiles says. “Do you know anything about that?”

“Little Malia? Why?”

“It turns out she was a werecoyote. They found her living feral in the woods about six months ago.”

“Damn! Poor thing.”

“Yeah. She was adopted, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Andy told me a little bit about it at the time. His wife’d had a real bad case of – endodontis?”

“Endometriosis?” Stiles supplies.

“Yeah, that’s it. They couldn’t have a baby the old-fashioned way, so they adopted one. She was a sweet little girl.”

“Do you know anything about why she was up for adoption, or what agency her parents went through?”

“No, sorry. It wasn’t the sort of thing we really got into. Hey, you should try Carol’s friend, Josie. Those two were practically sisters; she’d know the details if anyone would.”

“What’s Josie’s last name?” Stiles asks, and surprisingly the man has it. It takes him a couple tries to track her down, and her number is unlisted. He resorts to some skullduggery and finds her place of business and calls her there. Given the unlisted number, he’s afraid that she’ll be pissed, but she seems friendly.

“God, Carol wanted a baby so badly,” Josie says. “I guess she and Andy talked to their doctor about doing IVF, but it was just too expensive for them. Not that adoption is inexpensive, but I guess it can vary a little depending on the agency. My husband and I offered to loan them some money, if they needed it, but in the end they managed to scrape together the money themselves.”

“Do you know what adoption agency they used?” Stiles asks.

“Sorry, honey, I don’t.”

“That’s okay,” Stiles says. “This was still really helpful.” He exchanges pleasantries with her and hangs up.

What he really needs are the Tates’ bank records. Then he’d be able to see where the money went. But there’s no way he’s going to be able to get those now. The crash that had killed them was years ago, and after the WLO had been proved responsible, the case had been closed.

He closes his eyes for a long minute. He’s confirmed that Malia was adopted. He’s confirmed that her parents weren’t shifters, and that nobody knew she was. So regardless of where she was adopted from, the real question was, why had the WLO targeted the Tates? How had they known? Why had they cared?

After some time, he opens up a new tab and goes to the WLO victims forum and starts a new discussion topic. The forum isn’t as busy as it used to be, but there are still people who come there, people who had made friends and just enjoyed talking to each other.

‘New project – looking for info,’  he titles the post. ‘Hey everyone – I’m working on a case where the WLO targeted a family despite nobody knowing that their child was a shifter. Is there anybody here who knows of other cases where the WLO killed people who either weren’t shifters, or nobody knew they were?’

He posts it and stares at it for a long minute. Hits refresh. Stares. Hits refresh.

“What are you doing over there?” Derek asks as he comes in, covered in dirt and looking scruffy and amazing.

“Refreshing a web page in the hopes that someone will hit me up with a clue-by-four,” Stiles admits.

Derek snorts. “Well, if you’d prefer to do something more productive with your time, I brought you in some basil.”

“Oh, cool. I’ll make some pesto to go with tonight’s dinner.” As he’s talking, Derek is stripping his dirty shirt over his head. “You know. In a bit.”

By the time he gets back to the forum, it’s hours after dinner. Everyone has dispersed back to their own houses. And he has three replies waiting for him, three families who were surprised to hear that the WLO had been responsible for the deaths of their brother, their daughter, their niece.

“Okay,” Stiles says, and cracks his knuckles. “Let’s get to work.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	4. Chapter 4

 

“So this is weird,” Stiles greets Derek, rattling a sheaf of papers at him.

Derek glances over from the stone mosaic he’s designing. “By whose standards?”

“Weird even for us.”

At this, Derek turns away from the computer and gives Stiles his full attention. “Okay,” he says, “hit me.”

“So there are these three other families who were all killed by the WLO about four or five years ago,” Stiles says, setting down the folder and going over to the mini-fridge in Derek’s office to get them each a drink. “All three of them had a child Malia’s age.”

Derek frowns a little and accepts the can of soda. “Were they shifters?”

“No,” Stiles says, “or if they were, nobody knew. Now, I had a suspicion that these three kids were also adopted. These were cases I got through the WLO forum, so I reached out to the people who sent them to me and confirmed that. They were safe haven babies. Left on doorsteps at fire stations and . . .” Stiles gestures with one hand. “Sick people buildings.”

“Hospitals.” Derek reaches out absently, running his hand over Stiles’ hair. “Okay. So the question is, where did these kids come from?”

“Right. And it gets weirder.”

“Oh boy. Okay. How?”

“The babies were left at hospitals and fire stations in, respectively, Chicago, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.”

Derek looks blank. “Okay.”

“Those three cities are the three closest major cities to Toledo. Which is where the WLO had their facility trying to cure lycanthropy.”

“Oh.” Derek’s frown deepens. “Babies turning up around there can’t be a coincidence.”

“Yeah. It’s almost like someone broke into that facility, stole a bunch of their test subjects, and then dropped them on a bunch of doorsteps in the hopes that the kids would find good homes. Of course, we were never able to get most of the records from that facility, so I have no idea how we would prove that.”

“Plus there’s another question which might be even more important,” Derek says. “Where did these kids come from? It’s not like we can get babies out of test tubes.”

“Right,” Stiles says. “But we would have heard about a bunch of werewolf babies disappearing. So I ran a search to see if there was a rash of disappearing pregnant women, and there wasn’t. That would be next to impossible anyway. Werewolves get very protective of pregnant pack member, as we’ve seen with Laura and your mom. I mean, your mom was hardly ever alone while she was pregnant.”

“Well, there’s the obvious answer,” Derek says, and when Stiles gives him a questioning look, he says, “they weren’t pregnant when they went missing.”

“Oh,” Stiles says, then winces. “ _Oh_. Oh, shit. Yeah. That would be possible, huh. I – ” His face goes blank. “Holy shit. Holy shit, I know this case!”

“What? You do?”

“Yes! It was one of the files Duke gave me. There was a woman who disappeared, she lived somewhere in, uh, that mitten-shaped state. It got shuffled to the bottom of my pile because we knew she was dead, and there were pretty much zero leads. But I remember it because of _how_ we knew she was dead. Which was that about eight months after she disappeared, her mate suddenly looked at his alpha and said ‘she’s gone’, then promptly threw himself off a twelve-story building.”

Derek gives a little shudder. “He would know, so . . .”

“Right, exactly. But even though I wasn’t working on it, it stuck in my mind because of that weird gap. The WLO wasn’t generally known for kidnapping people. They just killed them. So why would they kidnap someone and then kill them eight months later? But at the time I was looking at it, I hadn’t had as much experience with werewolf pregnancy; I didn’t realize that the gestation period is shorter.”

Derek nods slowly. “That would be about as much time as you would need to impregnate a werewolf and have her give birth.”

“Right! I have to go. Find that file. Look up any other werewolf women who went missing around . . .” Stiles frowns. “But it wasn’t just werewolf women. Malia is a werecoyote. They must have had some other shifters, too.”

“That would make sense,” Derek says. “Go for shifters without packs. They’d be easier to abduct, but in theory the mechanism would work the same way.”

“Yeah. So I’ll expand the search to shifters in general.” Stiles leans over and presses a kiss against Derek’s temple. “You’re the best sounding board. Hey, date night tonight. We’re on duty. Prepare yourself.”

Derek gives a snort of laughter, then returns the kiss with one slightly more generous. “I’ll see you then.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Saturday being Date Night for the Hale pack is a tradition that goes back years. Baby-sitting duty is rotated, although lately Talia and Aaron have been taking it more often than not, the twins being so young. Laura’s youngest, Dominic, is nearly three years old now. Watching all of the kids together is a handful, but Stiles doesn’t see how adding Malia is going to make things much more difficult.

Tom clearly doesn’t agree. “You’re really sure you can handle this?” he asks, for at least the fourth time.

“Dad, we’ll be fine,” Stiles says. “We’ve baby-sat the five of them half a dozen times. There’s hardly going to be a difference. I have chicken nuggets and frozen French fries, popsicles for dessert, and a two hour Planet Earth video about birds. We are going to be one hundred percent okay.”

Peter leans in and nuzzles at Tom’s neck. “We haven’t had a night off since Malia got here,” he points out. “That was over a month ago.”

“I know that, but . . .” Tom huffs out a sigh. “I guess we can at least go out and get some dinner.”

“Then go back to your house for a bit, maybe?” Peter asks, his nuzzling turning into nibbling.

“Get off me,” Tom says, laughing. “Yeah, maybe. We’ll see how things are going.”

Stiles shakes his head a little as he shoos them out of the house. Baby-sitting is always done in the main house, just because it’s the biggest and there’s room to put all the kids to bed there. “I’m going to get dinner started,” he says to Derek. “I’ll keep Malia in here with me, since she likes to watch me cook, if you can keep the others occupied.”

“Sure,” Derek says, pressing a kiss into his temple before heading into the other room.

Malia sits at the kitchen table, playing with one of her squeak toys, while Stiles gets the chicken nuggets and the French fries in the oven. He grabs a few bags of frozen carrots and preps them to put in the microwave. “Okay, Malia, you want to come pick something out?” he asks, and she nods. She picks up one of the frozen carrots and sniffs it delicately. “Don’t try to – ” Stiles says hastily, but it’s too late.

“Too crunchy,” she says, gnawing away at the frozen carrot.

“That’s because it’s frozen,” Stiles says. “You can spit it out if you want – into the trash, not on the floor,” he adds, and she does so.

After sniffing some various boxes in the pantry, Malia becomes fascinated by the grapes on the counter because they don’t smell like very much. Stiles cuts one in half for her and lets her sniff the inside, and she decides she likes them, so he cuts some more of them up and puts them in a bowl.

“Why does she get extra food?” Tyler whines, as Derek gets everyone seated around the table and Stiles starts dishing up plates.

“She’s trying new things,” Derek says. “We’ve told you that.”

“It’s not fair,” Tyler says, pouting.

“They’re just grapes, Tyler,” Stiles says. “You have them all the time.”

Tyler subsides, eating his chicken nuggets while Derek makes a separate plate for the younger kids. Malia still doesn’t like the carrots, even cooked, but Stiles tells her if she eats half of what’s on her plate, she can have some extra nuggets. Tyler loves carrots, so Stiles tells him he can have the rest of Malia’s, which mollifies him somewhat. Everything seems to be going well until Tyler steals a grape off of Malia’s plate. Malia growls at him.

“Don’t take her food,” Derek says. “You know better.”

“It’s not fair!” Tyler protests.

“You can have some if you _ask politely_ ,” Stiles says. “You can’t just steal Malia’s.”

Tyler is still clearly out of sorts, but says, “May I have some grapes, Uncle Stiles?”

“Sure,” Stiles says, and gets another bowl to put some in. Tyler’s old enough to eat them without them being cut in half first. Stiles eats a few of them himself, since he still hasn’t had a chance to eat any of the actual dinner.

Everything’s calm until dessert, when Derek is handing out the popsicles. Tyler loves the orange ones, and Sylvia and Dominic both prefer grape. Malia hasn’t tried them yet, so Derek grabs one at random, which turns out to be cherry.

“I want to try theirs,” Malia declares.

“She can’t have my popsicle!” Tyler responds immediately.

Stiles ignores Tyler’s outburst and says, “Malia, you can only have one, okay? Next time we have popsicles, you can try an orange one.”

“The orange ones smell better,” Malia says.

“Okay, fine,” Stiles says. “Give me your cherry one – ”

“No!” Malia snarls.

Stiles takes a deep breath. “You can only have _one_ , Malia. Do you want orange or cherry?”

“I just wanna try the orange one!”

Tyler snarls at her, which is very unlike him. “Tell her she can’t have it!”

“I don’t wanna have it, I just wanna try it!”

“Both of you cut it out!” Stiles says. “Malia, I will give you half of a red popsicle and half of an orange popsicle. Keep your hands off Tyler’s. He doesn’t have to let you try it if he doesn’t want to.” He takes the cherry popsicle, and Malia yields it sullenly. He cuts it in half and then finds an orange one which he also cuts in half. The twins are more than happy to play with what’s left over.

This at least puts Tyler in a better temper, and he gives Stiles an orange-flavored kiss on the cheek when he finishes, before going into the other room, shouting, “Can I start the movie?” as he goes.

“Not yet!” Derek shouts after him. “Play with your Legos, we’ll be there in a minute.”

“I’m done too,” Malia says, slurping up the last of her popsicle and scampering towards the other room, clearly afraid that Tyler won’t obey and she’ll miss part of the film. Stiles rolls his eyes a little and collects the abandoned popsicle sticks while Derek wipes the twins’ faces off with a damp cloth.

“That looks like a lost cause,” Stiles observes, somewhat amused despite himself.

Derek laughs. “Yeah. Well, it’s their bath time anyway. I’ll take them upstairs, clean them up, and put them to bed. If you can handle the rest of the crew?”

“Let me get the video on first,” Stiles says, heading into the other room. A few minutes later, the kids are happily watching the birds and Derek has scooped up both the twins, heading upstairs. He hears water running and then happy splashing. About ten minutes after that, he hears the tub draining.

He’s just felt comfortable enough to pull out his phone and text his father to give him an update – kids fed, no disasters, they should definitely go have some time to themselves – when chaos erupts. He’s barely hit send when Tyler and Malia turn into a ball of tussling fur. “Whoa, whoa!” he says, and when he pushes his way between them, Malia’s teeth sink into his forearm. “Ow, son of a _bitch_!” he says, letting them both go involuntarily. “Derek, can you come help me?” he calls out, as Sylvia dives into the fray to protect her brother. Upstairs, the ruckus has clearly upset the twins, and now they’re both crying. “Derek!” he shouts again, trying not to panic.

Derek comes down the stairs and wades in, getting Malia by the scruff of the neck and lifting her off her feet. She’s still snarling and trying to squirm free, but Derek has her in a firm grip. “Stiles, you okay?”

Stiles has one hand clenched down on the bite wound, and he can feel his heart pounding in his throat. “I can’t – I can’t look at it, what if it – Derek, what if I go into rejection – ”

“Hey, hey,” Derek says gently. “She’s not an alpha. You’re fine.”

“But, but, she’s a coyote, not a wolf, does it work the same way? What if it – what if she – ”

Derek gently pries Stiles’ hand off the wound. “You’re okay, Stiles,” he says. “See? Just blood. You’re fine.”

Stiles lets out a gusty sigh of relief. “Okay,” he says, his breathing evening out. “Wow, okay, I don’t think I realized I was quite so traumatized by that.”

“Anyone would be,” Derek says. Malia’s stopped struggling, so he sets her down on the sofa. Upstairs, the twins are still crying. “What happened?”

“She tried to take Sylvia’s stuffed bunny and she can’t have it!” Tyler immediately says fiercely.

“Papa says that I can use your toys since I don’t have my own toys yet!” Malia snaps back.

“Malia, honey, that was weeks ago, we’ve bought you plenty of your own stuff since then,” Derek points out. “And even if you didn’t, you should still ask before taking something, and you shouldn’t snap and bite when you don’t get your way. Papa also said ‘no biting’, I’m pretty sure.”

“Papa said I could still be a coyote! Coyotes bite!” Malia is crying now. “I just want to be a coyote and nobody will let me!” She jumps off the sofa and sprints towards the back door.

“Oh hell,” Derek says, running after her.

Stiles is left with three crying toddlers, two crying babies, and an open wound. He bites his lip and says, “Okay, kids, you’re fine, I know you’re upset, just – ”

“I want my mom,” Sylvia wails.

Stiles decides that date night is officially cancelled, at least for some of the parties involved. He’s not about to disturb his father and Peter, who are getting their first night off from parenting in a month. But he _is_ calling Talia. She’s the only one who will be able to calm the twins down, anyway. He grabs his phone and dials her. “Talia, I hate to interrupt, but _help me_ ,” he says desperately.

Talia huffs out a quiet laugh. “Aaron and I just went for a walk in the woods after we ate. I sort of figured you might need help. I can be there in five minutes.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, calming down slightly. He grabs a dishtowel from the kitchen and presses it against the bite wound, gritting his teeth against the pain. “Sylvia, honey, you’re okay. Grandma Talia is coming home, you’ll see your mom in the, the after sunrise time. Dominic – never mind,” he adds, seeing that Dominic has gotten distracted by a chew toy and forgotten what he was crying about. Sylvia’s wails turn to snuffles. Tyler is sulking.

By the time Talia gets back, he’s at least gotten Sylvia to stop crying and back to watching the bird video. Derek has texted saying he’s corralled Malia and is talking to her. The twins are still screaming, so Talia goes straight upstairs to calm them. “Stiles, your arm,” Aaron says, clearly concerned. “What happened?”

“There was a tussle and Malia bit me,” he says.

Aaron winces. “I’ll get the first aid kit,” he says. Fortunately, the wound doesn’t seem serious. Aaron cleans it out while Stiles grits his teeth, then applies a bandage to it. “Okay, that’s better. What else do you need?”

“Can you stay here with Sylvia and Dominic? Me and my little man here need to talk.”

Aaron looks between Stiles and Tyler, whose sulk only grows more pronounced, and says, “Sure.”

Stiles scoops Tyler up, and he giggles despite himself. “Come on, you,” he says, and goes out to the back porch. He sets Tyler down and then sits down beside him. “Okay, buddy. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“Malia is the _worst_ ,” Tyler says, impassioned. “She’s mean and she takes our things and then she just says she’s allowed to. She goes outside without shoes and we’re not supposed to do that, and everyone’s so nice to her anyway and it’s _not fair_.”

Stiles sighs. “You know what?” he says, and Tyler eyes him suspiciously. “You’re right. It’s _not_ fair. You wanna know a secret, though?”

“Maybe,” Tyler says.

“Life isn’t fair. Things are never going to be fair. That’s what life is. Malia gets special things that you don’t get and it’s not fair. But we’re not doing it to hurt you. We’re doing it because Malia had a really hard life and she doesn’t know a lot of the things that you know. She didn’t learn a lot of things that you did. It’s _not_ fair, because life isn’t fair. That’s why you have to decide right now that it doesn’t matter what other people get or what other people have. That’s a secret to living a happy life. Not wanting what other people have just because they have it.”

Tyler huffs out a sigh. “I’m okay with her having things, but I don’t want her to have _my_ things.”

“Which is okay, most of the time,” Stiles says. “Yeah, sometimes you’ll have to share. But she wasn’t allowed to take your . . . your frozen orange juice on a stick, any more than you were allowed to take her grapes, right?”

“I guess not,” Tyler says.

“So if she takes your toy and she’s not supposed to have it, just tell me or your mom or someone else. Don’t start a fight with her. She doesn’t know how not to fight yet. She’s been fighting for years, just to stay alive. So she still thinks she has to fight all the time. She’ll learn that she doesn’t, that she’s pack now, and that we’ll take care of her. But she’s never had a pack before. She doesn’t get how it works.”

“That’s sad,” Tyler says.

“You’re right. It is sad. And that’s why Malia gets to go outside without shoes and you don’t, and why she gets to try special things at dinner. It’s not because we love her more than you. It’s just because she needs different things from you.”

“Okay,” Tyler says.

“Okay?” Stiles asks.

“Uh huh.” Tyler throws his arms around Stiles and gives him a hug. “Thanks, Uncle Stiles.”

“No problem, kiddo. Why don’t you go in and watch the rest of the bird video, and then I’ll read you guys a bedtime story.”

“Okay.” Tyler gets to his feet and scampers back into the house.

Stiles glances over his shoulder to see Talia standing at the back door, smiling at him. She walks over and helps him to his feet. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I think so. What are you smiling about?”

“I was just thinking about what a great father you’re going to make someday.”

Stiles groans. “Oh, God help me. I have never wanted kids _less_ than I do at this moment. Six simultaneous temper tantrums was too much for me.”

Talia shakes her head a little. “Despite what you may think, you did great. Six kids is a lot, especially when one of them is as volatile as Malia. Come on, let’s get you inside and see if some cuddling with the cubs puts you in a better mood.”

 

 ~ ~ ~ ~

 

Derek has to track Malia through what feels like half the damned forest before he catches up with her. She might be small, but in her coyote form, she’s _fast_. She’s shifted back by the time he gets to her though, and she’s sitting by a fallen tree, bawling her eyes out.

“Hey, you’re okay,” Derek says, sitting down next to her. “You’re okay, sweetheart.”

“I don’t wanna go back,” Malia sobs.

“Back?” Derek frowns. “Back where?”

“To New Beginnings! They’re the worst and I hated it there and I don’t wanna go back there!”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Derek says, smoothing her hair down. “We’re not sending you back. You’re part of our pack now. We’re never going to send you away.”

Malia just howls louder. “You will, I bit Stiles, I’m not supposed to bite but I bit Stiles and then I ran away and Papa and Daddy aren’t going to want me anymore, they’re going to send me away!”

Seeing that she’s not really in a listening mood, Derek just scoops her up and hugs her tightly, cradling her trembling form against his shoulder. He rocks her back and forth, murmuring quietly that they aren’t going to send her away. After some time, her sobs trail off.

“Better?” Derek asks, and she snuffles and nods. “Listen, Malia, we’re _not_ going to send you back. I know that some other people did that, and that must have been awful for you. But we’re not going to do that. We’re your family now. No, you’re not supposed to bite. But you were upset and you’re still learning how to balance being a coyote with being a person.”

“Papa said I’d always be a coyote,” she says.

“You will be. But you’ll also always be human,” Derek says. “And it’s hard. It’s hard for us, too, when we’re your age.” He thinks with some dread of what’s going to happen when Malia hits puberty. “We have to learn how to balance it, too. When you’re a human, you’re still a coyote. And when you’re a coyote, you’re still a human. But you have to learn when it’s okay to _show_ that you’re a coyote, and in what ways. It’s hard, and you’re still learning.”

Malia wipes her eyes. “But why did Papa and Daddy leave me with you tonight? Do they not want me anymore?”

“That’s not it at all,” Derek says. “It’s just . . .” He tries to figure out how to explain this to an eight year old. “Sometimes, we just want to spend time with our mates. Just the two of us. Other people being there, even people we love, distracts us from taking care of our mate. I love my whole family, but sometimes I want it to just be me and Stiles. It doesn’t mean I love my family any less. But Stiles is my mate and that’s special.”

It’s a terrible explanation, not least of all because Peter and Tom aren’t even mates, technically. But Malia seems to accept it, because she’s stopped crying. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. And you know what? When they get home tonight, I’m one hundred percent sure that the first thing they’re going to ask about is you. They’re going to come in and say ‘how’s Malia? Did she eat okay? Is she asleep already?’ and then they’re going to want to come see you even if you’re asleep.”

“Really?” Malia looks suspicious.

“Really.”

“Can I stay up and wait for them to come home and see me?”

Derek has no idea what time that will be, but Malia’s had a rough evening, so he says, “Sure. On one condition. You have to apologize to Tyler and Sylvia, for taking Sylvia’s toy and then snapping at Tyler.”

Malia scowls. “I like that toy.”

“I know, honey, but it belongs to Sylvia. It’s hers. If you want to play with it, you have to ask her first, and if she says no, you have to respect that. And I bet if you told Papa that you like it, he’ll get you one just like it.”

“It won’t be the same,” Malia says. “I like the way that one smells.”

Derek is about to ask why, but then he remembers the bunny in question’s origins. It had belonged to Peter when he was a cub, and he had kept it to give to his child. After Olivia’s death, he hadn’t wanted anything to do with that box, so Talia had given it to Laura for her children. “Well, maybe we can get a new one for Sylvia and you can have that one, _if_ Sylvia says that’s okay.”

“Okay,” Malia says, snuffling a little.

“So are you going to say you’re sorry to them?”

“Yeah.”

“And to Stiles?”

Malia shrinks a little. “I didn’t mean to bite him. I was upset.”

“You still have to say you’re sorry, though.”

“Okay.”

Derek stands up and picks her up, since it’s quite a ways back to the house. When they get back, Stiles is reading Tyler and Sylvia their bedtime story. Dominic is already asleep. Malia goes into the room with her head down and mumbles, “I’m sorry I took your toy, Sylvia. I just really like it. It smells like Papa. I’m sorry I snapped at you, Tyler. I’m sorry I bit you, Stiles.”

“Thank you, Malia,” Stiles says, and Tyler echoes him. Sylvia is already half-asleep and doesn’t respond.

Derek takes her back downstairs, and finds his father watching television. He mutes it when they walk in, and smiles at them. “Sorry that we had to call you,” Derek says.

Aaron shrugs. “Parenting is hard work. And I gather a bunch of things happened at once.”

“That’s the truth,” Derek says, smoothing down Malia’s hair. “We’re going to wait up for Peter and Tom. Do you mind if we wait in here?”

“No problem,” Aaron says. “The news was boring anyway. How about some Loony Tunes?”

“Sure,” Derek says.

Before long, Malia is giggling. Stiles comes down to join them, and Derek is relieved to see that his wound has been properly bandaged. Stiles promptly curls up next to him, resting his head on Derek’s shoulder, and goes to sleep.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why yes, I *am* trying to send you all into sugar comas, thanks for asking! <3

 

It takes some effort, but after a few hours at the old Stilinski house, Tom and Peter manage to tear themselves away from privacy and head back to the den at just before midnight. Tom has received two texts from Stiles – one after dinner and then one about an hour later, saying that they were having story time. So he figures everything went well.

Then he walks in and finds his son, daughter, and son-in-law sound asleep on the sofa. He frowns at them for a few seconds before Talia pokes her head out of the kitchen and waves them in to join her. “Dare I ask?” he says, keeping his voice low so as not to wake them.

“Derek told Malia she could wait up for you,” Talia says, “but then she fell asleep, and they didn’t want to disturb her, so they put on a movie, and then _they_ fell asleep.”

“Why was she waiting up for us?” Tom asks, his frown deepening. “Stiles told me everything was going fine.”

Talia rolls her eyes. “He’s such a liar,” she says, and Peter gives a snort. “No, it was pretty much an unmitigated disaster. Tyler and Malia got in so many fights that it turned physical. Stiles tried to wade in and Malia bit him, then she got upset and ran off, Derek chased her down, and Stiles had to call me to come home early and help him corral the others.”

Tom pinches the bridge of his nose. “I told him to call me if there were any problems . . .”

“Tom. Come on. It was your first night off in a month.” Talia shakes her head. “We all know Stiles has a tendency to ignore what he’s been told to do if he thinks he knows better. Especially if it involves the welfare of people that he considers himself responsible for.”

“God knows _that’s_ the truth,” Tom agrees with a sigh. “Okay. But everything turned out all right?”

“Stiles had a talk with Tyler about how life isn’t fair, which he was surprisingly receptive to. Derek had a talk with Malia about how we weren’t going to send her back to the group home because she’s having trouble with her coyote. Apparently she was worried that the two of you taking a night off meant you were getting sick of her.”

“Oh, geez,” Tom says, and feels Peter’s back tense underneath his hand.

“Derek reassured her that it did not, and that he was sure that when you came home, you were going to be full of questions about how she was feeling, so she asked to stay up until you got home, presumably so she could verify this with her own ears. So now that we’ve covered all that, I suggest we open and close the front door loudly, and then you can ask me all the questions you would have if you hadn’t been told about the disasters.”

Peter’s mouth curves in a smile, and Tom has to admit that it _is_ a little funny. They troop back into the front hallway and he opens the door, then lets it fall shut with a muffled thump. It wouldn’t be loud enough to wake anyone upstairs, but he sees both Derek and Malia startle awake. Stiles snoozes on. “Hey, how is she?” he asks, pretending that they haven’t already been talking. “Was she okay without us? Is she asleep already?”

“She fell asleep on the sofa,” Talia says, keeping her voice low but not so quiet that they can’t hear her clearly. “She did fine. I think she got a little lonely.”

“Did she eat okay?” Peter asks.

“Yeah, she did fine at dinner, Stiles said.”

“You said she was on the sofa?” Tom asks, peeking in to get a good look at her. Malia’s eyes are open, and when she sees him, she buries her face in Derek’s chest.

“Do you think we should put her to bed?” Peter asks.

“Yeah, she’ll sleep better that way.” Tom walks in and says, “Hey, sweetheart. Awake?”

“Maybe,” Malia mumbles.

“Let’s get you to bed, okay?”

Malia nods and leaves the shelter of Derek’s embrace, letting Peter scoop her up and carry her out to the porch. “I didn’t have my bath,” she mumbles.

“You can take an extra one tomorrow,” he teases, and she scowls at him. “Do you want a story?”

“Nuh uh.” Malia clings to Peter as he tries to lay her down. He lays down next to her, then pats the pile of cushions. Tom kicks off his shoes and lays down on Malia’s other side. It’s not exactly comfortable, but he’d rather be there than anywhere else in the world.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

“That’s fewer than I thought it would be,” Derek says, looking at the wall of Stiles’ room in interest.

Stiles glances over his shoulder as Derek comes in and says, “It’s fewer than I thought it would be, too. I mean, literally hundreds of thousands of missing persons reports are filed every year. But a lot of them are quickly found, so there are only a couple thousand each year that go unresolved. So I’ve taken those that were unresolved and filtered by gender and species.” He shuffles some papers. “Now, there’s about one werewolf for every thousand people, so they already comprise a very small percentage of the population. They comprise an even _smaller_ percentage of missing people. About one out of every five thousand. There were years in here where none went missing at all. But then, eight to nine years ago, bam!” He slaps his desk. “Seven were-women went missing all in the space of three months.”

“Those sound like our women,” Derek says, nodding as he looks over the pictures. “What kind of shifters?”

“Three werewolves, one werecougar, two werefoxes, and one wereraccoon.” Stiles frowns a little and adds, “No werecoyotes.”

“Hunh,” Derek replies.

Yeah.” Stiles shrugs a little. “So the WLO kidnapped these women. Impregnated them and experimented on their babies. Pretty classic horrifying WLO stuff. Then some as-of-yet-unknown person broke in and stole them, left them on doorsteps. They were adopted out, and the WLO systematically tracked down where they went to erase the evidence.” He thinks this over for a minute. “Given that all of that makes sense, I’m not sure if there’s anything else for me to investigate.”

“What about the other babies? There are seven women here, and we’ve only accounted for four.”

Stiles rubs his hands over his face. “The WLO already found the others. I only got three off the WLO forum, but before I searched for the women, I looked through the WLO files for more times they had killed families with kids Malia’s age. They all line up. The WLO got this done years ago. We’re only stumbling on it now because Malia got away and they never found her.”

“Jesus.” Derek reaches out to Stiles, not just to comfort his mate, but to comfort himself. “And we’re sure everyone’s been held accountable?”

“Not in the slightest. There were two contractors that confessed to these individual cases, but the _only_ thing tying them to the specific crimes is their confessions. Anyone could have done it, to be honest.”

Derek grimaces a little. “What about the people who kidnapped these women?”

“In theory, they all got arrested during the sweep of the Toledo facility. But . . .” Stiles sighs a little. “These cases went cold a long time ago. None of these women were found precisely because these people didn’t leave evidence. Which . . . actually . . .” His face goes still.

“What?” Derek asks.

“It’s just, honestly, a little too good to strike me as the WLO’s work,” Stiles says. “Like, hey, I’d love to be super proud of myself for solving your family’s murder, but . . . Kate could get kind of sloppy. Once I knew what I was looking for, I linked a whole bunch of murders to her. Same with the cases Duke sent me. A lot of the time, they came apart really easy.”

Derek nods slowly. “But we know that the facility in Toledo was run by the WLO.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t contract out for the test subjects.” Stiles twirls a pencil in his hand. “Particularly since abduction wasn’t really in their wheelhouse. But I don’t exactly know who to call to look for Kidnappers-R-Us.”

“True, but the cases must have commonalities, right?” Derek asks. “If the detectives earlier didn’t connect them, they might not have realized that.”

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” Stiles says. “I guess I’ll request the case files and see where it takes me.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles tries to keep his class schedule arranged so he has two long days and three shorter ones. His Tuesdays and Thursdays ae typically packed full, but he usually only has classes on the other days in the morning. This semester he also has one on Monday and Wednesday in the afternoon. Fridays, however, he’s out of class by eleven thirty, so he usually grabs a quick lunch on campus and then does the grocery shopping on the way home.

He comes back to the house to find Peter and Malia at his house, rather than at the main house, and he gives Peter a questioning look. “The twins were in a _mood_ ,” he says, and Stiles laughs despite himself. “We were looking for some peace and quiet.”

“Well, your timing is excellent,” Stiles says, dragging the wagon he uses to transport the shopping into the house, “because I have summer fruit.”

“Summer fruit?” Malia climbs up onto one of the stools that sit at the kitchen island.

“Mm hm. It’s finally in season and I thought you might want to try a few things. Let me get all this unpacked.” He starts unloading the groceries. Malia ‘helps’, mostly by trying to open things and smell them, while Peter tries not to be overly indulgent. Stiles manages to keep her from opening too many packages, but lets her smell the various fruits and vegetables. “I need to wash those first, don’t eat them yet.”

“I didn’t wash anything when I was a coyote,” Malia tells him.

“Well, here we wash things before we eat them,” Stiles says.

“Technically, Malia’s right,” Peter says. “I mean, shifter immune systems being what they are – ”

“Don’t even finish that sentence, Uncle P,” Stiles says, opening the carton of strawberries to run under cold water. “Just because you _can_ eat dirt doesn’t mean you _should_ eat dirt.” He empties out the carton into a bowl and then reaches for the raspberries. “Soon melons will be in season. You’ll like melon. I used to cut them in half and scoop them out like a civilized person but apparently werewolves like to just smash them and make a mess.”

“That sounds fun,” Malia says.

“Another month, maybe,” Stiles says, laughing. He puts the raspberries in a bowl and then washes the blueberries. “Okay. Don’t eat the green part on the strawberry.”

“Why not?” Malia asks, picking one up.

“Because it doesn’t taste good,” Peter says, going for the raspberries. He watches Stiles take out another carton of strawberries. “Keeping those for yourself?”

“I’m going to make chocolate-covered strawberries for Derek.” Stiles starts rinsing the second carton with a smile. “It’s our anniversary this weekend. Which, while I’m talking about it, can you get me a pot?”

“Sure.” Peter hops off his stool, leaving Malia squishing raspberries experimentally between her fingers and then licking them off. He hisses a little as his weight comes down on his ankle, and Malia’s head snaps up in concern. Stiles looks over, too. “It’s nothing, little one,” Peter reassures Malia. “Just a twinge in my ankle.” He tests it gingerly, and grimaces as pain flares through the joint.

“Is it ‘cause you’re old?” Malia asks curiously.

Peter snorts, amused despite the pain and confusion. Stiles is frowning, trying not to get too tense and alarm Malia. He still gets anxious easily, and probably always will, given everything they’ve been through. “Were you doing anything out of the ordinary today?”

“No, and it was fine when we walked over here.” Peter lifts his leg up and props the foot up on the stool, examining the joint. It looks normal, but when he gives it a cautious squeeze, he winces.

“Maybe – ” Stiles says, and then his phone rings. He glances down and sees that it’s his father, so he answers it. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Just wanted to let you know I’m going to be late tonight, don’t wait on me for dinner,” Tom says. “Had to chase this purse snatcher. He went over a fence and I came down on my ankle badly. It’s probably just a sprain but the EMTs think I should get it x-rayed to check for a hairline fracture.”

“Okay, no problem,” Stiles says. “I’ll keep something warm for you. Tell Ms. McCall I said hi, if she’s there.”

They say goodbye and hang up. Stiles looks over at Peter, knowing that he heard the other end of the conversation. He’s gone very still, and Stiles knows that Peter has put the pieces together the same way he has. “Uncle P – ”

“I have to go,” Peter says abruptly, and jogs out of the house, limping slightly but not letting it slow him down.

“Craaaaaaaaap,” Stiles mutters.

Malia is growling. “What’s wrong?” she demands. “Where’s Papa going?”

“I’ll explain in just a second, cutie,” Stiles says, pulling out his phone. He thinks about calling his father, but if he’s going to the hospital to get an x-ray, he won’t be home for a while. He calls Talia instead. “So, small problem,” he says, and can practically hear her sigh. “My dad sprained his ankle at work, and Peter’s ankle started aching.”

“Oh,” Talia says, sounding more surprised than anything else. “That’s, well . . . unexpected, but I don’t know that it’s a bad thing per se.”

“I don’t know, but Peter overheard my dad calling and now he’s left and I can’t go after him because I’m here with Malia.”

“Oh.” Surprise turns to worry. “All right. I’ll see if I can find him. Did he seem upset?”

“He didn’t seem much of anything. He just said ‘I have to go’ and left the house.”

“All right. Thank you for calling me, Stiles,” Talia says, and hangs up.

Malia is growling, low and sullen. It escalates to a snarl when Stiles puts down his phone. “I’m sorry, Malia, but I wanted to make sure Peter’s okay.”

“He’s not okay,” Malia growls.

“Look honey, it’s complicated,” Stiles says. “I’ll explain, but there are some things you might not understand, so let me just do the best I can and don’t be mad, okay?” He starts drying off the strawberries while she gives him a suspicious look, but nods. “Okay. You know what a mate is, right? Like Derek is my mate, and Aaron is Talia’s. Well, a long time ago, before you were even born, Peter had a mate, a woman who was named Olivia. And she died.”

Malia fiddles with a blueberry. “Like my mom and dad died?”

“Yeah. A lot like that, actually. And Peter was very sad for a long time. Then he met my dad and fell in love again. But just being in love isn’t the same thing as having a mate.”

“Why not?” Malia asks.

“That’s the part that’s kind of hard to explain. Most people think you can only have one mate. If your mate dies, you’ll never have another. But that might be because most people don’t survive if their mate dies. They’re too sad to keep living.”

Malia is frowning now, clearly having difficulty following him. “Can sadness kill people?”

“Yeah, it can,” Stiles says, because that’s a lot easier than explaining suicide to an eight-year-old. “But Peter kept living because he wanted to find the people who killed his mate. And then he met my dad. And he loves my dad, but he didn’t think my dad was his mate, because we didn’t know someone could have a second mate. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Malia says.

“But what happened today, my dad hurt his ankle – ”

Malia growls, clearly unhappy about that.

“ – and Peter could feel the pain. That’s something that only happens between mates.”

“So Daddy is Papa’s mate?”

“Yeah.”

Malia thinks about this, kicking her legs back and forth while she makes a little pyramid out of the raspberries. “Why did Papa leave?”

“Well, I think he’s upset because . . .” Stiles lets out a breath and thinks about how he can explain this. “When your parents died, you were sad. Now you have new parents. They’re not the same as your parents who died. They love you, and they’re going to take care of you, but they’re not the same. Sometimes you still probably feel sad about your parents being gone, even though you have new ones. Right?”

Malia nods.

“Do you ever feel like your parents might be mad that you have new parents now?”

“What? No.” Malia scowls. “That’s silly.”

Stiles smiles a little. “Okay. You can tell Peter that it’s silly. Because I think that’s part of what he’s worried about. He’s afraid that . . . my father being his mate means he somehow loved Olivia less. That she would be upset with him for finding somebody new to be with. Do you understand?”

“No,” Malia repeats, then adds, “but I don’t think that’s because you’re not explaining it right. I think Papa’s just a nitwit.”

Stiles snorts. “Feelings are hard, kiddo. They don’t always make sense. Sometimes even if we know what we’re feeling is silly, we can’t just not feel it.”

“That’s silly too,” Malia grumbles. Then she asks, “Is Papa going to be okay?”

“He will be,” Stiles says. “My dad will make sure of it.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Tom has barely been at the hospital for five minutes before his phone rings. He looks down to see Talia’s name and frowns slightly, picking it up. “Hey, what’s up?”

“How’s your ankle?” Talia asks.

“Still waiting for the x-ray. Why?”

“Well, apparently Peter’s ankle was hurting today, too.”

“Huh,” Tom says. “Why, what’d he do?”

There’s a pause, then Talia says, “I forgot you weren’t really there when this happened last time. Do you remember when Isaac’s father tried to kill him? Well, Cora experienced the pain of his injuries along with him. It’s called sympathetic pain, and it only happens between mates.”

It takes Tom a moment to wrestle with his surprise. He’s heard Stiles theorize about this, about how maybe werewolves _can_ have a second mate, and it’s just never been known because it’s so rare for a werewolf to survive the loss of their first. He’s always known it was a possibility that he and Peter really were mates, but it’s never seemed that important. He suspected that if they were, it would upset Peter, so there was no point in stirring up a wasps’ nest. “That’s . . . interesting, okay. How do you think Peter will handle it if he figures it out?”

“Well, we’re about to find out,” Talia says, “because he and Malia were over at Stiles’ when you called, so he overheard the conversation. Easy enough to put those puzzle pieces together. He left right after you hung up with Stiles, and Stiles called me. He’s got Malia, so don’t worry about her. He said Peter didn’t seem to be having much of an emotional reaction yet.”

“Great.” Tom rubs a hand over his face. “Okay. I’ll go find him.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Honestly, they were pretty sure it was just a sprain. I’ll get them to wrap it up and come back for an x-ray if it’s still hurting in a couple days.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.”

Tom’s not sure, at least not that his ankle’s not broken. He is, however, sure of something else, which is that Peter’s not going to want him injuring himself further. So he has Melissa wrap it and give him a pair of crutches. Fortunately, it’s his left, so he can still drive easily enough. He’s guessing that Peter is at the memorial tree, which is about a mile from the house. He parks as close as he can get and starts into the forest.

As he had anticipated, Peter shows up before he’s made it more than a quarter mile. He shows up snarling, “You shouldn’t be walking on that.”

“Yup,” Tom agrees.

Peter gives an annoyed huff. Then he scoops Tom up without waiting for permission.

“You always make me feel like a princess,” Tom tells him, and a slight smile cracks Peter’s face. “But maybe we should talk here, before we go back to the house.”

“There’s not much to talk about, is there?” Peter asks. “It is what it is. Did you at least get your x-ray before you came after my melodramatic ass?”

“No,” Tom admits.

“For God’s sake. You’re supposed to be the responsible one.”

Tom shrugs. “It’s just a sprain. I’ll get it x-rayed if it still hurts in a couple days. Treatment would be the same anyway, keep it elevated, take some aspirin – ”

“Don’t walk a mile on uneven terrain?”

“I didn’t have to.”

Peter huffs out another sigh and then stops, setting Tom down on a fallen log. He sits down next to him, folding his arms over his abdomen. “Injuries are annoying. Don’t know how you can stand them.”

“Well, I do try to avoid them whenever possible,” Tom says. He reaches out and twines his fingers through Peter’s. “What do you need, Peter?”

“I need . . .” Peter’s quiet for a moment. “I need to go home. To eat dinner. To, to act like this is normal and okay. If I act that way long enough, maybe I’ll believe it. Because it should be. I know that you being my mate doesn’t change what Olivia and I had. I know that Olivia would want me to be happy, would be thrilled that I found someone to be with. I _know_ all that. So maybe if I just keep telling myself that, eventually I’ll feel it, too.”

“Okay.” Tom presses a kiss into his temple. He frowns a little and adds, “This sympathetic pain thing . . . will you be okay to walk?”

“I can handle some pain.” Peter stands up, pulling Tom with him. He lets Tom lean on him instead of carrying him. “Olivia and I . . . we didn’t have this.”

“No?” Tom’s not sure of whether or not that’s something that will upset Peter.

“No. It’s very rare. Actually, before Cora and Isaac, I had never known anyone who did. They think it has something to do with trauma surrounding the original bond, but nobody’s really sure. It hasn’t been studied much. In any case.” Peter lets out a breath. “To be honest, I’m glad we didn’t. If I had felt what she felt . . . back then . . . there’s no way I would be here today. Whether I wanted revenge or not. I wouldn’t have survived that.”

“I don’t think anybody would have,” Tom says.

“You understand you’re never allowed to get hurt again.”

Tom gives a snort at Peter’s complete deadpan. “Roger that. I’ll make a note.”

Peter is quiet the rest of the way back to the house, and Tom lets him have the quiet. It’s only about four o’clock, so most of the pack is still gone. Malia practically pounces on them as they come in through the door. “I’m glad you’re my parents now!” she states fiercely, glaring at them.

Her pint-sized glare is so incongruous with the statement that Tom almost starts laughing. He manages to squelch it just in time. “Well, thank you, Malia,” he says. “We’re glad you’re our daughter now.”

“My parents wouldn’t be sad,” Malia says, directing this to Peter. “They would be happy someone is taking care of me. Your mate would be happy, too.”

Peter smiles at this, an equal mixture of sadness, affection, and amusement. “Yes, she would,” he says. “Have you and Stiles been having fun? I see he let you have chocolate.”

“Chocolate and strawberries is better than deer,” Malia confides, lowering her voice as if she’s afraid the deer will overhear and be insulted.

Both men give a snort of laughter, and Peter ushers Tom into a chair. “Sit,” he says.

“Are you going to fuss?” Tom asks, with an appealing look.

“Obviously I’m going to fuss. You’re my mate and you’re hurt. It’s my job and my right to fuss.” Peter scoops Malia up and places her in Tom’s lap, then grabs the footstool and lifts Tom’s foot onto it. “I’ll make you some tea. Don’t go anywhere.”

Tom smoothes down Malia’s hair. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, a vague attempt to use a canon villain! Mostly I just like the way Calaveras rolls off the tongue. XD

 

Stiles is chopping garlic and onions in preparation for the tacos he’s planning to make that evening when his phone vibrates. He finishes what he’s doing, giving his hands a quite wash and then swiping them against the stainless steel refrigerator to take the garlic smell off. He picks up his phone to see a text from his father. ‘You free? There’s someone at the station to see you.’

Stiles frowns a little at that but texts back, ‘omw’. He pulls on his shoes and heads for the door. He’s still bitter about the loss of his old Jeep, but the new one is pretty awesome, too.

It takes about twenty minutes for him to get down to the station. His father is out in the field, he’s told, but his secretary shows him into a conference room where there’s a lean, Hispanic man waiting. “Ah, you must be Stiles,” he says, standing up to shake Stiles’ hand. “Javier Estrada. I’m with the FBI. Organized crime division.”

“Oh, uh, good to meet you,” Stiles says, a little baffled. “Sorry to keep you waiting. The den is a ways out of town.”

“No problem,” Javier says, waving this off. “It occurred to me when my plane landed that I should have called ahead, but I was excited to get here. You’ve requested some case files which are connected to an open investigation of ours.”

“Oh!” Stiles says, somewhat surprised, but less confused. “Okay. The missing women?”

“Yes. You see,” Javier says, sitting back down, “we suspect the abductions were the work of a group called Calaveras. We’ve actually been trying to track them down for years, but as you probably gathered with your initial research, they are very good at what they do.”

Stiles nods. He notes in some amusement the difference between Agent Estrada’s attitude, and Raphael McCall’s from the year before. “Calavera . . . that’s Spanish for skull, isn’t it?”

Estrada smiles at him. “Yes, indeed it is. The group originated in Mexico and worked with the cartels in the eighties and nineties, but after that, they migrated into the United States and began taking on more diverse work. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but abductions are more common in Mexico – or at least they used to be. Many influential people in Mexico and South America had children kidnapped and ransomed while the cartels were at the height of their power.”

“I’ve read about it, yeah,” Stiles says, nodding.

“We suspect that the Calaveras began using those skills here, and that at least in these cases, it was in the services of the WLO,” Estrada continues. “Oh, which reminds me – you missed a case.”

Stiles blinks, thinking of the lack of werecoyotes in his list. “I did? I pulled every missing woman from that time frame.”

Estrada smiles slightly. “Yes, you see, you missed the one that doesn’t fit the pattern. Hardly your own fault. There was no missing persons report filed for her, so she wouldn’t have come up. She is something of an intriguing mystery, entirely separate from the investigation of the Calaveras.” He opens up a briefcase and pulls out a manila folder. Out of that, he takes a photograph of a driver’s license and sets it down on the table. It shows an attractive, dark-haired woman who is probably in her mid-to-late twenties. She’s vaguely familiar but Stiles can’t figure out why. The name on the license is Graciela Fuentes. “This,” Estrada says, “is victim number eight, who went missing from a small town in New Mexico. And now you know everything about her that I do.”

Stiles frowns a little, looking at the picture. “What exactly does that mean?”

“Graciela Fuentes was an alias,” Estrada says. “The name, social security, everything she was using belonged to a woman who had gone missing twelve years prior. Later discovered to have been a suicide whose body had gone unidentified. The address on the license? An empty house. No phone records, no financials, no anything. This woman does not exist.”

“Then how do you know she’s missing?”

“Because we found her car.” Estrada waves a little and says, “I assume you’re familiar with the Calaveras’ method of abduction.”

Stiles nods. There aren’t many good ways to get hold of a shifter, and the Calaveras had used the same one Jennifer Blake had used on him and Talia the year before. Ram them off the road, subdue the shifter while they’re still disoriented from the crash. All seven – or apparently eight – of the abductions had been done the same way. So had the murders of the adopted children and their families. If the wounds sustained in the crash hadn’t been fatal, they had been shot. “So you found a car that had been run off the road?”

“Precisely. We ran the VIN and found it registered to this Graciela Fuentes.”

“Do you even know for sure she was a shifter?” Stiles asks, thinking again of Malia.

“Ah, yes,” Estrada says. “She was injured in the crash. Forensics took a blood sample. It belonged to a werecoyote.”

Stiles looks down at the picture again. Malia’s mother.

“And that,” Estrada says, “was the beginning, middle, and end of our investigation. Everything we tried to run on this woman ended in total mystery. She was a ghost. How Calaveras even knew to target her is something we weren’t able to figure out.” He waves a hand quickly. “Ah, I’m sorry, I’ve gotten sidetracked. Our mystery lady from New Mexico is fascinating, but she actually isn’t the reason I came. Back to the Calaveras.”

“Right,” Stiles says, trying to tear his gaze away from the picture. He’s far more interested in that, but he doesn’t want to say so.

“They’ve gone fairly quiet in the last few years,” Estrada continues, “but of course, we still want to try to bring them to justice for their past crimes. I have some additional notes on the missing women that I thought you might want, as well as dossiers on the key suspects in Calaveras, although much of that information is unfortunately hearsay.”

“Wow,” Stiles says. “I, uh, thanks. Really. Wow.”

Estrada smiles at him. “I’ve seen your work, Stiles. We had investigated the infanticide in Chicago too, you know. We couldn’t solve it. You did.”

“Leo Stewart did,” Stiles says, because he still can’t bring himself to take credit for that. “I just found his notes.”

Estrada gives a little shrug. “Still. Your work with the WLO and Search for a Cure was also impressive. I don’t want to waste a resource. Particularly since, from what I know of you, you would continue to investigate this even if I got a court order telling you not to.”

Stiles looks at the ceiling innocently.

“Though if you don’t mind my asking, what brought you to the case?” Estrada asks.

“Oh, uh,” Stiles says, thinking quickly. He didn’t want to mention Malia. “Some people on the WLO forum were talking about how they had been surprised to find out that their families had been killed, because they hadn’t been shifters. Turns out that their adopted kids _were_ shifters. Safe haven babies that had probably been rescued from the WLO facility in Toledo. Not that I can prove that, since they destroyed most of their records. Anyway, I started looking for their mothers and found this pattern of missing women.”

“Ahh, fascinating,” Estrada says. “In any case, let me give you my card. I’m out of the San Francisco office, so I’m not far. Call me if you need me, or if you find anything.”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Stiles says. He shakes his hand and accepts the pile of manila folders.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

“There are actually more reasons than you think, why someone might be using a fake identity,” Tom says, when Stiles asks his opinion on it the next morning. “Some of them are active criminals, of course. Some are former criminals who are trying to hide from their pasts. But she could also have been an abused woman hiding from her abuser. Or an undocumented immigrant who used an American identity to get a job. Why do you ask?”

“Uh, well, it has to do with Malia,” Stiles says.

Tom pinches the bridge of his nose. “You said you had verified that her parents were killed by the WLO. Do I even want to know how this led you to investigating a woman with a false identity who lived in New Mexico?”

“We-e-e-ell,” Stiles says, clearing his throat, and Tom just looks more long-suffering. “I was trying to figure out _why_ the WLO killed Malia’s parents. Because they weren’t shifters, and nobody knew _she_ was a shifter. So it turns out that Malia was a safe haven baby who was, most likely, dropped off at a fire station after being rescued from a WLO facility.”

“And they were tying up loose ends,” Tom says, nodding.

“Right. But, uh, I sort of didn’t stop looking then even though I should have, because I was wondering where the babies had come from, and I found this pattern of missing women . . .”

Tom immediately understands why Stiles is side-stepping. “Stiles . . . is this Malia’s mother?”

Stiles sighs. “I think so. Yeah.” He adds hastily, “I mean, it probably doesn’t matter. She’s almost certainly dead. We know that the WLO killed the women after having their babies. But it just, I wanted to know, and then it turned out to be this total mystery woman . . .”

“And now you’ve sunk your teeth into it.”

“Plus the FBI actually gave me files and stuff because they think the abductions were contracted out to a group called Calaveras, and I – ”

“What? No,” Tom says, slapping the table suddenly. “I have been _very_ supportive of your life choices, Stiles, but I’m going to draw the line at you investigating a cartel’s hit squad! Absolutely not.”

“They don’t work for the cartels anymore, Dad!”

Tom looks at the ceiling and takes what feels like fifteen deep breaths. “Stiles. An organization like Calaveras is _dangerous_.”

“Gee, I don’t know anything about danger,” Stiles says sarcastically.

“Reminding me of the times you’ve ended up in the hospital while investigating is _not_ going to help you make your case, bucko!”

“But Dad – ”

“Don’t you ‘but Dad’ me! I know you’re an adult now, but you have to show a little bit of self-preservation instinct! People who investigate groups like Calaveras are trained in a lot of ways you’re not. They’re trained in counter-surveillance, so they’ll know if they’re being followed or watched. They’re trained in negotiation and de-escalation techniques so they can talk their way out of bad situations. They’re trained with firearms, in case they _can’t_ talk themselves out of a bad situation. Listen to me, Stiles, I am _serious_. I am done seeing you get hurt. When you’re out of college and you’ve gone to Quantico and have an FBI badge, investigate Calaveras all you want. Until then, you will _drop_ this. Am I making myself clear?”

Stiles sighs. “Fine,” he says. “I guess it’s not like the WLO is still hiring them to kidnap werewolves, so it’s not exactly relevant to my interests, anyway.” He opens his mouth to ask his father if he can still investigate Graciela Fuentes, but then decides against it. If he doesn’t ask, his father won’t have the chance to say no.

Tom gives him a look, clearly assessing his sincerity. “Okay.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Stiles says, somewhat awkwardly.

Tom sighs. “I probably overreacted. Just remember, all those times you’ve been lying miserable in a hospital bed, I’ve been sitting next to you, wondering what I could have done to prevent it.”

Stiles winces and says, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Be careful.” Tom reaches out and tousles his son’s hair. “Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” Stiles bounces out of his chair. “Anyway, thanks for the help. Good talk. I’ll see you back at the house later.”

Tom shakes his head a little as his son departs and takes a minute for a few more deep breaths. He knows his temper has been short lately, and it’s not something he wants anybody to notice. He thinks sometimes the hardest part about being an adult is when he knows his feelings are out of line, but he still can’t just not _feel_ them. He had been thinking that about Peter lately, when he sees Peter playing with his wedding ring. He knows that there’s a part of Peter that still worries about what his relationship with Tom means about his relationship with Olivia.

Feelings are irrational sometimes, and Tom is used to dealing with that, with his son, with his husband – but it’s a little bit new for him to be dealing with it himself.

Since going back to work, he’s been worrying that he doesn’t see enough of Malia. It’s funny, because he never worried about that with Stiles. He was the breadwinner, and Claudia took care of Stiles. When he came home from work in the evening, Stiles was always thrilled to see him, wanted to detail the exploits of the day, wanted to hammer his father with questions about what he had done at work. So he had never worried about how much he worked.

Malia, on the other hand, barely seems to notice when Tom comes home from work. Sometimes she looks up and says hi, but that’s the extent of her initiating interaction. Tom can ask questions about what she’s been reading and if she’s been having fun, and she’ll answer them. But she doesn’t actually seem _interested_ in interacting with him.

He knows she’s had a hard life, and he tries not to worry about it. But it doesn’t help that she follows Peter around like she’s a duckling. When she wants something, it’s Peter she goes to. When she’s bored or upset about something, it’s Peter she goes to.

It shouldn’t upset him. It’s ridiculous that it upsets him. He’s sure that Stiles had done the same, when he wanted to know if he could go outside and play, when he wanted to get a snack before dinner. But at least Stiles had been happy to see him. At least Stiles had wanted to play with him, to show him things.

It’s been getting worse, in a way that contradicts her overall progress. In fact, Tom thinks that it’s _because_ of her overall progress. Whereas in the beginning, she needed constant reassurance, she’s becoming more independent and confident. Which, for some reason, makes Tom inclined to cling. It’s just – it’s faster than he had expected, like the transition from toddler to child is happening overnight. He should be happy that she’s settling in, but instead he feels inexplicably abandoned.

He hates how irrational and petty it feels. He hates not being able to just put it out of his mind. So Malia is different from Stiles. Why wouldn’t she be? So she likes Peter better. That just makes sense. He’s more similar to her in so many ways. So she isn’t jumping off the sofa to meet him when he comes home from work. They only met two months ago – why would she?

None of it makes sense, and he feels like he should probably talk to somebody about it, but he doesn’t know who. He’s not about to tell Peter. He doesn’t want Peter to feel bad, and somewhat selfishly, he doesn’t want Peter to think less of him for how ridiculous he’s being. He could talk to Talia, but she’s always so straightforward. She tackles problems like an alpha, and she would want to take this head-on and try to _fix_ things. But Tom doesn’t think this is the kind of thing that can be fixed.

Honestly, he thinks the person who might understand best is Stiles. Stiles knows all about how irrational feelings can be; he’s struggled with his low self-esteem for years. But the conversation they just had had served as a beautiful reminder that Stiles is, in some ways, still a child. He’s not the sort of person Tom can talk to about that sort of thing. For the time being, he’ll just have to try not to think about it, and hope that things get better over time.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

“The timing on this is all wrong,” Stiles complains to Derek.

“Wrong how?” Derek asks.

“Graciela Fuentes’s car was found on August twenty-ninth, which was probably the same day it crashed or the next day. It wasn’t way off the road or anything; someone must have noticed quickly. Malia, along with the rest of the babies, were found in varying cities on September fourth and fifth.”

Derek frowns a little. “So she can’t have been Malia’s mother.”

Stiles holds up a finger. “She could have been. If she was pregnant when she was abducted. There’s certainly no way to know that she _wasn’t_. Since none of the other women were were-coyotes, that’s my best explanation. But she certainly wasn’t held captive for six months.”

“Mm.” Derek watches Stiles pace around. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m just – she’s familiar to me somehow. I’ve seen her face before and it’s bothering the shit out of me. The FBI ran it through facial recognition and got nothing. But it’s not just that. Graciela Fuentes was living under a completely false identity. She had no phone records, which means she only used burners, and no financials. But she wasn’t poor. The car that was registered to her was a Lexus.”

“So who in the hell was she?” Derek asks.

“Mystery woman gets abducted and five days later the kids turn up. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“You think she’s the one who broke them out?”

“Yeah, I think there’s a good chance of that. If she found out about the facility but couldn’t figure out where it was, maybe getting abducted was her best bet, so she slipped them the information about her fake identity. Or maybe she genuinely did get abducted and they just got more than they bargained for.”

“In which case . . .” Derek’s eyes widen. “She could still be alive.”

Stiles nods. “Yeah. Jesus, Derek. Should I keep looking, should I push this? If she’s the one who dropped Malia off at a hospital, she clearly wanted her to find a different life. Dad and Uncle P have been so happy since bringing her home. What if this woman tries to take her back?”

Derek lets out a breath. “I don’t know, Stiles. It’s a hard choice. Maybe we should try to verify that she’s the one who broke them out, that she’s still alive, before we agonize over it too much.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I wonder why she didn’t keep her, though.” Stiles picks up the file on the Tates’ murder and starts flipping through it idly. “I mean, obviously she couldn’t keep all eight kids, but you’d think she would have wanted to keep her own.”

“We have no idea what kind of life she lived,” Derek points out. “It obviously wasn’t an easy one.”

“True. But she – ” Stiles stops flipping.

“What?” Derek asks, hearing his heartbeat pick up.

“It’s her.” Stiles takes out a photograph of the Tates’ crashed car, which had gathered a group of onlookers. One of them, standing towards the back of the crowd, is Graciela Fuentes. “She was _there_. What the hell was she doing there?”

“Hopefully not returning to the scene of her crime,” Derek says with a grimace.

“Maybe she was looking for her daughter,” Stiles says. “Maybe she heard about the accident and went to try to find Malia.”

Derek frowns, then shakes his head a little. “If she did, she didn’t look very hard. She should have been able to track her by scent. This picture was only taken a couple hours after the crash, right? Malia couldn’t have gotten far by then. There’s no reason an adult shifter wouldn’t have been able to find her.”

“Jesus.” Stiles scrubs both hands through his hair. “You know, now that I’m thinking about it, the locations are weird.”

“Which locations, and weird how?”

“The babies were all dropped off within a few hours of Toledo, right? And since they were safe haven babies, they went into state custody, et cetera. But the Tates lived in Oregon. How the hell did they wind up with a safe haven baby from Ohio?”

“That is weird,” Derek agrees, frowning. “What about the other families? The ones who were killed?”

Stiles starts going through his files. “Columbus, Ohio . . . Effingham, Illinois . . . Elkhart, Indiana . . . yeah. All these other families were from the Midwest. The Tates are the only ones who didn’t live in the same area.” He chews on his pencil for a few moments before saying, decisively, “She had a connection to them somehow.”

Derek nods slowly. “Most of the babies got dropped off on doorsteps, but Malia was her daughter. She would have gone the extra mile for her.”

“You know what else,” Stiles says, pulling out the folder on the Tates’ murder. “This was something that bothered me from the beginning. The Tate family lived on the north side of this little town in Oregon. Virtually any place worth going to – the grocery store, the movie theater, the, the money office, whatever it’s called – were all south of their house. But their car was hit about twenty minutes _north_ of town.”

“They were trying to get out of town,” Derek says, nodding.

“Yeah. I bet Graciela, or whoever this is, found out that the WLO had started murdering the kids. She called them to warn them to get out of town, and then headed up there, maybe to check on them, maybe to try to intercept the killers. But she got there too late.”

“I still don’t get why she didn’t try to find Malia.”

Stiles is staring down at the pictures from the crash. “I think maybe I do.” He spreads a series of three pictures out on the table. “These three photos were all taken within the space of about a minute. In this first photo, Graciela is looking at the car. Then in this one, she’s turned her head. She’s looking at something across the road. In the next one, she’s gone.”

“She saw something that spooked her,” Derek says. “The WLO or Calaveras or whoever, they were still there. They knew they had lost Malia. But wouldn’t that be even more of a reason for Graciela to go find her?”

Stiles shakes his head and says, “No. She left Malia lost and feral because that was the best protection for her. The WLO couldn’t smell her, couldn’t track her the way that she could have. But if she had turned and walked into the forest . . .”

“They would have followed her.” Derek sighs. “She would have led them right to her.”

“Yeah.”

“It must have killed her to walk away.”

“Yeah,” Stiles repeats, a little more quietly. “And this doesn’t help me find her. There’s only so much I can get about the Tates at this point. But I’ll keep looking.” He fiddles with his pencil for a few moments, then says, “When do you think I should take this to my dad and Peter?”

Derek grimaces a little. “Soon, I guess. We’ve confirmed she survived the WLO, that she was alive four years after they killed the rest of the mothers, so . . .”

“Yeah. I guess I’ll see what I find.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	7. Chapter 7

 

Derek glances up as Stiles sets down a stack of books on their kitchen table with a thud. “What’s all that?”

“Yearbooks,” Stiles says. “One of the few things not open to electronic manipulation, and therefore one of the best ways to track down people’s identities if they don’t want to be found. That’s how I found out that Seth wasn’t a real person.”

Derek grimaces a little at this reminder of the man who had insinuated his way into their pack. “Okay, but what yearbooks? I mean, how do you know which yearbooks to get?”

“They’re Carol Tate’s,” Stiles says. “If she and Graciela Fuentes were actually friends, there’s a strong possibility they went to school together. Carol was twenty-six when she and her husband adopted Malia. Graciela looks to be about the same age in the photos we have of her. At that age, it’s less likely that they met through work or anything like that. Carol didn’t go to college, so it’s likely that Graciela was a childhood friend.”

“Makes sense,” Derek says.

“I’ve got high school, eighth grade, and fifth grade here,” Stiles says, and hands the junior high yearbook to him. “Take a peek?”

“Sure.” Derek starts looking through.

It takes a little while. Carol was originally from San Antonio, and her graduating class had almost eight hundred students in it. Her middle school and elementary school had been smaller, so Derek looks through both of those while Stiles looks through the high school yearbook.

“Huh,” he finally says.

“Mm?” Derek asks.

“I don’t see her in here anyway. Except . . .” Stiles holds out a page that has candid shots of the student, some taken during sports games or in the cafeteria. “In this one shot right here. She _did_ attend this school. But she doesn’t have a senior photo.”

Derek smiles a little and says, “Of course not. Weres usually don’t. We can’t look directly at the camera without reflecting the light. It’s not a big deal in group photos or candids when we can look away without it looking weird. But in a one-on-one shot? Most weres avoid them, or if they go to an all-were school, it’s a fun game of who can take the best picture without flash-glaring the camera to death.”

“Oh, yeah,” Stiles says, laughing. “I remember that from our senior photos. Scott had those crazy sunglasses and Cora did some weird position from that, uh, that Madonna song, to cover her eyes.”

“Vogue,” Derek supplies. “Look under students listed but not pictured.”

“Right.” Stiles flips to that page to see a list of about twenty names. “Geez, that’s a lot to track down. I mean, half these names are Hispanic, so that doesn’t rule many out. I’ll have to look them up individually. I . . . no _way_.”

“What?” Derek asks, leaning over his shoulder.

“Jessica Gonzalez!”

Derek blinks. The name is vaguely familiar to him. “Who is . . .?”

“She’s another one of the missing women. A beta werewolf who disappeared from an Austin suburb.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Derek warns. “That’s got to be a pretty common name.”

“Right. Okay.” Stiles takes out his laptop and starts typing. “God, I love your mother so much for this subscription to the Lexis-Nexis. Had I mentioned that recently?”

“Pretty much every time you’re looking stuff up,” Derek says, amused.

Stiles hums contentedly and types for several minutes before saying, “Okay, yes. Jessica Gonzalez, born in San Antonio, went to college in El Paso, moved to Austin after college, disappeared the same year Malia was born. Same person.” Stiles looks up at Derek. “They were all friends. I bet that’s why Graciela – or whatever her name was – ended up involved in this. She was looking for her friend.”

“So let’s see who she is.”

“Right.” Stiles takes the list of ‘not pictured’ students and starts running it through the DMV. He hits nothing until the last name. “Gotcha!” he says, and Derek leans over his shoulder again. “Corinne Valencia.”

The woman in the DMV photo is unmistakably the one who had gone missing from New Mexico. Like in her New Mexico driver’s license, she’s looking to the side, rather than at the camera.

Stiles is already typing again. “All three women lived on the same block. They were probably best friends ever since they were in diapers. After high school . . . Carol married Andrew Tate, and they moved to Oregon where he got a job offer. Jessica went to college and then got a job as a vet technician in Austin. It looks like she was commuting back to San Antonio to spend weekends with her pack, and that’s when she got ambushed. As for Corinne . . . she drops off the grid entirely. No college degree, no marriage, no kids . . . not even a parking ticket.” He chews on his lower lip. “Given what we know about her, my guess is that she got into something illegal. Maybe not even necessarily bad. The WLO wasn’t the only anti-werewolf hate group around, and there were some other groups that acted against them in . . . less than a legal fashion.”

Derek nods. “Okay, this is all interesting, but does it get us any closer to finding her?”

“Well, not instantly,” Stiles says. “I was sort of hoping if I could find her real identity, that would get me somewhere. But she isn’t using it, hasn’t used it in over a decade, so that’s a dead end. But knowing where she’s from lets me find her family. They might still have contact with her, so that’s the next step.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

“You seem out of sorts about something,” Peter says, perching on the edge of Tom’s desk.

Tom glances up at him. There’s a part of him that thinks he’ll never get used to werewolves being able to smell his mood. Of course, most of the werewolves are polite enough not to mention it. Then there’s Peter. “I’m fine. Stiles was in here earlier, talking about how he wants to take a few days off of classes to go to San Antonio for an investigation. Because naturally he can’t wait until school ends in two weeks.”

“Mm hm.” Peter regards him with that intense gaze. “That’s not really why, though, is it? You’ve been upset for days, probably a few weeks now.”

Tom pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath. “Peter,” he says, careful to keep his voice calm and even. “I would like you to let this go.”

Peter’s quiet for a few moments. “Can you at least tell me – is it something I did?”

“What? No,” Tom says, and he can see some of the tension in Peter’s shoulders relax. He changes the subject. “What are you doing here, by the way?”

“I had some business to conduct in town. Laura drove me, but it took longer than expected and she had to leave to pick up Tyler from school. I thought I could hitch a ride back to the den with you, when you’re done for the day.”

“Oh, sure,” Tom says, and hesitates.

Amused, Peter says, “Malia is with Derek and Stiles. I’m sure they’re taking adequate care of her. Derek was showing her the garden and she was playing in the dirt, happy as a clam.”

A smile rises to Tom’s face, unbidden, but almost immediately sours when he thinks about the fact that Malia even likes Derek better than him.

Peter senses the change, scents it, and breathes out a sigh. “Tom. I won’t make you tell me what’s wrong, but I don’t like you being upset. If you won’t talk to me, will you please talk to somebody? You could talk to Aaron, he’s good with the emotional things that I’m bad at.”

“It’s just – it’s childish, and stupid, and – ” Tom winces but admits, “I’m afraid he’d think less of me. I’m afraid _you’ll_ think less of me.”

“Ah,” Peter says. “Yes. Because of course, as we all know, I have _never_ been childish, thoughtless, or otherwise undeserving of you.”

That makes Tom smile a little. “You make yourself sound a lot worse than you are.”

“So do you. Perhaps I will think less of you. Perhaps I’ll think, ‘wow, that is incredibly petty and unreasonable, Tom’. But I wouldn’t worry too much. Would you notice a few grains of sand missing from a beach? No. So I doubt whatever miniscule disapproval I feel will make much of a difference.”

Tom’s cheeks flush pink. “That’s very poetic.”

“Sometimes the mood strikes me.” Peter moves himself into a chair and rests his arms on the desk. “Talk.”

Tom swallows, then says it one go, ripping the band-aid off. “Malia likes you more than me, and it bothers the shit out of me.”

He’s not sure what he expects from Peter – well, the uncertain part of him expects disappointment, contempt – but sympathy or sorrow are equally likely possibilities. What he doesn’t expect is the entirely blank, confused look Peter gives him. “Malia does not like me better.”

“What? Yes, she does, she _very clearly does_ ,” Tom says. “She follows you everywhere. Whenever she wants or needs something, it’s _you_ that she goes to. She’s always paying attention to you, watching you. She barely even _looks_ at me.” His throat tightens with frustration, and he swallows the lump there. “She doesn’t care about me at all.”

Peter tilts his head to one side, regarding him for a moment, before he says, “Do you trust me?”

Tom sighs. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Peter says, and punches him hard in the face.

Tom reels backwards with a yelp. “What the hell was that for?”

“You’ll see.” Peter stands up. “I’ll get myself home. See you in a few hours.”

He walks out of the office, leaving Tom gaping behind him. After a few moments, he goes to the kitchen to get some ice. Even with that, it’s quite the impressive black eye he’s sporting as he leaves for the day. He can still see, which is lucky, but it’s tender and swollen and he’s not in a very good mood.

At this time of day, everyone will be gathering at Stiles and Derek’s for dinner. He parks outside and considers not going in, but that really _would_ be childish, so he squares his shoulders and walks inside. Stiles is in the kitchen, and Aaron is helping him, but everyone else is in the living room. That’s lucky, because it means that Stiles doesn’t immediately notice the black eye. Of course, it’s hard to miss, and Talia is the first one to say, “What hap – ”

She’s interrupted almost immediately by Malia, who bolts over to Tom, skids to a stop in front of him, and demands, “Who hurt you?”

Tom blinks at her, then tries to take on a soothing tone. “I’m okay, honey, it’s just – ”

“No!” Malia stomps her foot. “Not okay! Someone hurt you! I’m going to rip their throat out! You have to tell me who it was!”

Tom risks a look at Peter, and sees him sitting in the bay window, smiling serenely. He clears his throat. “Just some crazy guy at work who hit me,” he says, and sees Peter’s smile widen, becoming a bit of a smirk. He’s frankly astonished by Malia’s reaction, since he honestly wouldn’t have figured she would care or even notice. “It’s fine, sweetheart. Just a little bruise.”

Malia is still growling, low in her throat, and she drags him over to the sofa, making him sit down and then crawling into his lap. The growl continues to vibrate against him while Talia asks if he needs an ice pack and he says he’s fine, although he’d love a shot of pain drain. Peter comes over and presses a kiss against the wound, the pain seeping out of Tom’s face and into Peter.

For the rest of the night, Malia is practically glued to Tom’s side, and she’s scowling more than she has since the first week she got there. She growls when anyone comes near him except Peter or Stiles, which the other werewolves tolerate with good graces. Tom smoothes down her hair and pats her back and tries to be as soothing as possible. When it’s bedtime she wants Tom to read her a story instead of Stiles, and insists that Tom stay on the porch with her.

It’s not until the next morning that Tom has time alone with Peter, when Malia finally stops clinging to him because Stiles is making pancakes with chocolate chips in them. “Okay,” Tom says, “this has got to be a werewolf or werecoyote thing.”

Peter shakes his head. “Not exactly. It’s just something psychological. Maybe someone as well-adjusted as you can’t really understand it.”

Tom sighs. “Try me.”

“Malia doesn’t watch you because she doesn’t have to.”

“Okay . . .” Tom says, in a tone that clearly invites further explanation.

“The loss of her parents, the years she spent feral, they . . . unmoored her, in much the same way that losing Olivia unmoored me. She relates to you the same way I do, which is why I knew what to do. Sorry about punching you, by the way. You wouldn’t have believed me if I had just tried to explain it. In any case,” he continues, waving this aside, “Malia realized from day one, possibly minute one, that you are the rock she can set her back against. The steady, stable, reliable point to use as a center. She doesn’t watch you because she doesn’t have to. She _knows_ , without looking, that you’re there. If she asks me for or about something, it’s because she doesn’t know how I’ll react, and she’s gathering data. She doesn’t ask you, because she already has you figured out. But the ground has been shifting underneath her for a long time. She doesn’t trust it not to do it again, so she’s wary, cautious, of everyone. Everyone except you. You have been catalogued, categorized, and filed away as the one thing she can rely on. That’s why she was so upset when she saw that you had been hurt.”

Tom feels his eyes stinging despite himself. “You really think she . . .” he begins, and Peter gives him a patient look. “Yeah, okay. I guess what happened yesterday proves that.”

Peter leans in and kisses him on the mouth. “It’s a truly amazing quality, that sort of reliability. Not particularly sexy or exciting, perhaps, but exactly what she needs. And exactly what I needed.”

Tom returns the kiss, then says, “Well, I do my best. But try not to punch me too often, okay?”

“Agreed,” Peter says, with a quiet laugh. “Now let’s go get some pancakes.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Derek has to admit that he’s a little bit amused at Stiles’ annoyance that he can’t just drop everything and go to San Antonio. He has classes, and denmaking, and can’t he just call Corinne’s relatives? Does he actually need to go see them? He knows that Stiles is very hands-on when it comes to investigations, he is still a college student with a lot of other responsibilities.

“It’s just such an important investigation, I’d rather do it face-to-face,” Stiles says.

“Well, would you rather do it over the phone, or wait?”

“I’d rather sneak out Friday night and fly to San Antonio,” Stiles says. “We could tell my dad we were, uh, going to San Francisco for the weekend. He’d buy that!”

“Not after you were talking to him about going to San Antonio,” Derek points out, and Stiles sighs, clearly much aggrieved. “Hey. Come on, you’ll work it out. For one thing, you got so excited about it that you didn’t even check to make sure her family still lives there. For all you know, we actually could find them in San Francisco.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.” Stiles rakes a hand through his hair and sits down at his laptop. “Okay. Corinne Valencia was one of two kids, both girls. Parents are both still alive, and . . . damn, you were right. They don’t live in San Antonio anymore. They don’t even live in America anymore. They moved back to Mexico. Monterrey.”

“Well, we _could_ go see them there, but . . .” Derek frowns a little. “What about the sister?”

“She is . . .” Stiles types for several more minutes. “Still in San Antonio. Okay.” He sighs. “I guess I’ll call her. At least her number’s online, so it’s not like she’s trying to hide.” He chews on his lower lip for a moment, then pulls out his cell phone and dials. Derek listens to it ring on the other end, and then go to voicemail. Stiles winces, because he doesn’t like leaving voicemail for this kind of thing, when it’s delicate. But he knows she won’t call back an unknown number if he doesn’t, so he says, “Hi, my name is Stiles Stilinski. I’m with the police department in Beacon Hills, California, and I’m hoping I can talk with Michelle Valencia about a missing persons case I’m working on.” He leaves his number then hangs up. “Waiting is the worst.”

Derek leans over and presses a kiss into the side of his neck. “That’s the real reason you don’t like doing things over the phone. You have to wait for people to call you back.”

“Maybe a little.” Stiles huffs out a sigh and then glances at the oven. “That pork roast will be done soon, so I’d better get started on the rest of dinner.”

“Can I help?”

“Sure, if you want to slice some zucchini for me.”

Derek accepts the vegetables and the cutting boards, smiling a little too himself. He always likes helping Stiles in the kitchen, likes the fact that Stiles is secure enough now to _let_ other people help him, without thinking it means he’s incapable. He slices the zucchini while he watches Stiles scrub the potatoes and put a pot of water over to boil. He’s barely gotten three done before Stiles’ phone rings. He grabs a dish towel and then his phone. “Hello?”

“Is this Mr. Stilinski?”

“Yeah, Stiles, it’s Stiles. Is this Michelle?”

“Yes, it is. I, uh, I’m a little perplexed why someone in California would need to talk to me about a missing person.”

“Well, actually, I’m looking for your sister, Corinne.”

“Corinne?” Michelle sounds startled. “I haven’t talked to her in over ten years.”

Stiles gives a little grimace, and Derek knows he was hoping for better. “She might have information about a couple who were killed in Oregon a few years ago.”

“Is she a suspect?”

“No, definitely not. But we think she might have been a witness.”

There’s a silence on the other end of the phone. “I don’t know how much I could tell you. Like I said, I haven’t talked to her in years. I don’t have any idea where she is, and I don’t have any way to get in contact with her.”

“That’s okay. Can you tell me when and why you fell out of touch?”

“It was after she graduated high school. I was a few years older than her, and I was in college at the time, but Corinne wasn’t interested in college. She started working as an activist for a pro-shifter group, and . . . things got out of hand. This group was less Greenpeace and more Earth Liberation Front, if you know what I mean. She was arrested a few times. My mother tried to get her to leave the group, but she refused. Then they got in a big argument because Corinne wanted to get in contact with our Uncle Hector.”

“Hector?” Stiles jots the name down. “Was he connected to the shifter group?”

“No, he worked with one of the cartels in Mexico. Corinne thought he would be able to get them weapons. My mom absolutely forbid it.”

“Your family had connections with the cartels?”

“Not my immediate family, but yes. Is that important?”

“It might be. The couple in Oregon might have been murdered by a group called Calaveras. They used to work for the cartels.”

The silence on the other end of the phone seems surprised, but could be confused or even panicked. Derek understands why Stiles prefers to do this in person, where he could see her facial expression and body language. Finally, Michelle says, “Corinne wanted to use the cartels to further her own interests, but she wouldn’t have ever worked for or with them. I guess that’s all I can really say.”

“Is there any chance you can get me your Uncle Hector’s information?”

“Sorry, no. I heard he died a few years ago. But I hadn’t seen him in even longer than I’ve seen Corinne.”

“Do you happen to know if Corinne ever did manage to get in touch with him?”

“I know my parents wouldn’t give her his number. But Corinne was – the determined sort. If she wanted to find him, she would have. She was good at what she did, you know? She was a fighter, and really smart.”

“Okay. Thanks for all your help,” Stiles says. “If you think of anything else, can you give me a call?”

“Sure,” Michelle says. “Hey, if you do find her – tell her that I miss her, and she should come home so I can punch her in the face for never calling.”

Stiles laughs. “Will do.” He hangs up and sighs. “That was moderately useless.”

“But not entirely,” Derek points out, starting on the next zucchini. “We know that Corinne had connections to the cartels. That’s probably how she knew where to look, what to do, when her friend Jessica went missing.”

“It doesn’t help us find her, though.”

Derek frowns, thinking this over. “She must have given Carol Tate a way to contact her. I mean, she gave the Tates her daughter.”

“Not necessarily,” Stiles says. “If she was more concerned with safety and security, she wouldn’t. She might have checked in occasionally, but she could do that on her own terms, from a burner phone, from anywhere in the world.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” Derek says. “It’s just weird to think about her not giving them a way to contact her in the case of an emergency. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a mother would do.”

“That’s sweet, but you know, there _are_ bad moms in the world,” Stiles says. “Just like there are bad fathers. I mean, look at Scott’s father. You couldn’t find a bigger jerk.”

Derek grimaces a little, but nods.

“Not that I’m saying Corinne was a bad mother, just that not every mother on the planet needs to be in contact with their child all the time.” Stiles sets a pan on the stove and pours some olive oil in. “Wanna text your mom and Laura to let them know dinner’s going to be ready in about ten?”

“Sure.” Derek pulls out his phone as Stiles checks the temperature on the pork roast that’s been in the oven. “You know, it seems like the only time and place we can pin Corinne down is the time she went to Oregon to try to warn the Tates.”

“Yeah.” Stiles chews on his lower lip. “Yeah, that’s true. Every scrap of evidence we have on Corinne suggests that she liked to live in the southwest. Texas, New Mexico - she moves around, but all the data points to that. Which means that she would have flown. And the only airport anywhere near that town is Portland.”

“Do you think she would have left straightaway?” Derek asks. “We know that she didn’t look for Malia, and she would have wanted to get away from whoever had killed the Tates. That or she killed them and needed to flee the scene.”

“Right.” Stiles heads into the other room and picks up his folder on the Tates. “Okay. The last phone call that Carol Tate’s phone got was at about two thirty, which was from a cell phone with a Phoenix area code. They tried to track it down but it was a burner. So that would be Corinne’s warning. They didn’t waste any time. Maybe threw a few things into bags, but they must have left not long after, because the car was found at three thirty. This photo that we have of the crash scene with Corinne in it was taken at six forty-five. And the drive from Portland to the site of the crash is about an hour, so she would have had to land by five thirty at the latest.”

“Not a long flight,” Derek says.

“Or a chartered one.” Stiles shakes his head. “In which case we’d be fuck outta luck. So let’s focus on commercial flights. It’s faster to jump on one of those at the last minute than charter a flight anyway.”

Derek has his phone out. “Phoenix to Portland is two and a half hours. It would have been tight but she could have made it.”

Stiles is nodding. “It would make sense for her to be in or around Phoenix. When you buy a burner, it’ll have a local area code. So we need the passenger manifests for every flight from Phoenix to Portland that left between two and three PM.”

“Can we get those?” Derek asks.

“I’ll call my buddy over at the FBI and see if there’s anything he can do.” Stiles frowns, then adds, “Tomorrow, I guess. He probably wouldn’t appreciate it if I called him at dinner. Plus, I don’t have a home number for him, so.” Stiles heads back into the kitchen just as the door opens and Talia and Aaron come in with the twins.

“You two look serious,” Aaron says, as Derek pulls out the high chairs.

“Just hard at work solving the world’s mysteries,” Stiles says. He leans over and tickles Hope’s neck; she squeals and grabs at his fingers. “Let me finish up with dinner.”

The others arrive, and start setting the table. Malia immediately runs over to sniff the zucchini, which she hasn’t had before. “Here, try this,” Stiles says, shaking a little Parmesan cheese into her hand. She licks it cautiously and proclaims that it’s good. “See, zucchini is magic,” Stiles tells her seriously, “because it’s a very healthy vegetable, that I can sauté in oil and add Parmesan cheese to and turn into something Daddy’s not allowed to eat.”

Peter gives a quiet little snort, and Tom gives his son a long-suffering look. Malia, for her part, is curious. “Why not?”

“Because too much fat is bad for him.”

“Too much _taste_ is bad for me, by your standards,” Tom grumbles. “Come on, Malia, come sit down.”

Malia does, plopping into the chair by his elbow while Derek and Aaron get the food on the table. As soon as Tom reaches for the dish of zucchini, she growls at him. “No. Stiles says it’s bad for you.”

“Oh, come on,” Tom says, as the adults at the table try to stifle their laughter. “Stiles, tell her I can eat the zucchini.”

“This is awesome,” Stiles says, snickering. “I have someone else to help me watch your diet now.”

“You are not too old for a grounding, buster – ”

“I really kind of _am_ ,” Stiles says, but adds to Malia. “He can have a little. He can have . . . three pieces.”

“Three?” Tom says, outraged, and several of the adults can’t hide their laughter anymore. Tom slumps and says, “I guess that’s still better than when you used to refuse to cook it at all and just tried to give it to me raw.”

“Raw zucchini is good,” Peter says, picking up the dish of zucchini and putting a generous portion onto Tom’s plate. Malia growls at him. “Don’t fuss, little one. He can handle some zucchini, I promise.”

Malia watches them with narrowed eyes, but allows this. Stiles pouts. Tom leans over and kisses Peter on the cheek. “I knew there was a reason I married you.”

“How flattering,” Peter says, and everyone laughs even harder.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	8. Chapter 8

While Derek views going through enormous lists of passenger manifests as something horrific, Stiles just pats him on the shoulder and says it won’t be that bad. He has a hunch, he says, and Derek watches in interest as he puts each list into a spreadsheet and starts typing. “This is a little bit of code Danny taught me a couple years ago,” he says, “when I was researching the alphas that might have been responsible for Gerard Argent’s death. It looks for the same name appearing on different lists.”

Derek frowns. “Why would she appear on two lists? It’s not like she flew to Portland twice.”

“No. But my guess is that she also flew _out_ of Portland a few hours later. So I had Agent Estrada send me the manifests for all the flights that left Portland from seven PM until midnight. Which, as you can imagine, is a ton of people, especially since I didn’t filter by destination since we don’t know whether or not she would have gone back to Phoenix.”

Derek is nodding along. “Okay. And it’s got to be a really small number of people who flew in and out the same day.”

“Yep.” Stiles hits the enter key with a flourish, and it beeps. “Just one, in fact. Angelica Navarro. Flew out of Portland at ten thirty PM, and it looks like she did go back to Phoenix afterwards. Though I bet she didn’t stay long.”

“She probably had things she needed to get,” Derek says. “It’s not like she would have packed before leaving for Oregon.”

“So the question is, is she still using this identity?” Stiles has switched to a different program and starts typing. A few moments later, he deflates. “No. Nothing on it for the past three years.”

Derek sighs. “Well, it was worth a try.”

“It might still be helpful.” Stiles starts typing again. “She obviously assumed a false identity for . . . God, the name of that group keeps falling through my brain. I keep wanting to call them the Skulls.”

“Calaveras,” Derek prompts. “But Skulls works. I’ll know what you mean.”

“Right, okay. She assumed a false identity for the Skulls to ‘abduct’ her, but this one could have records associated with it. It does have a phone number and an address. Which, okay, obviously she won’t be using it anymore. But there might be something here we can use to track her.” He yawns and stretches. “I’ll have my dad pull phones and financials for her. I have a photo of her at the crime scene and a hastily booked ticket out of Portland a few hours later. That’ll be enough to label her as a person of interest in their murder and get a warrant.”

“Except that the Tates’ murder is a closed case,” Derek reminds him.

“Balls. Except for that. Well, I’ll still ask my dad. Their murder is a closed case, but the disappearing women aren’t.”

The next morning, Tom reacts with extreme skepticism to Stiles’ request, but he says he’ll see what he can do. “What does Agent Estrada think of this?”

“Oh, well, after I told him that Corinne had a connection to Calaveras and might have information and/or proof that they were helping the WLO kidnap women, he was all on board,” Stiles says. “Just to make it clear, I did not in any way pursue Corinne’s connections with the cartels. I’ll leave that to the good agent.”

“And if this information leads you to the cartels?” Tom asks.

Stiles sighs. “I guess I’ll leave that to him, too.”

“Good.” Tom ruffles his hair and gets on the phone.

It takes two days, but he gets the warrant, and all the records that “Angelica Navarro” had to her name. It’s not as much as Stiles would have liked. Even on an identity she was willing to use, her footprint was small. There are some bank records and a credit card. Phone records were extremely sparse; Stiles guesses that she used a burner for most things. There were some utilities in her name, which matched to the address she had on file, an apartment in north Phoenix. She had a car registered to her, a blue Audi.

The credit card had only been used for a handful of things, all of them big purchases. Twelve hundred dollars at an endodontist’s office. Two thousand at an electronics store. The plane tickets she had used to get to Oregon and the rental car she had used there.

One purchase draws his eye, though; it’s a five hundred dollar charge that goes to somewhere called Animals of Austin, and it appears twice, exactly a year apart. He Googles it and finds out it’s an animal shelter in Austin, Texas. The main page talks about how it was set up by the Gonzalez pack to honor their daughter, Jessica, who had been murdered.

“That’s sweet,” Derek says, peering over Stiles’ shoulder.

“Yeah, it is.” Stiles is typing. “Corinne donated five hundred dollars two years in a row, both times on Jessica’s birthday. Want to bet she does it every year?”

Derek nods. “Seems like a likely supposition.”

Stiles gets on the phone and calls Danny, whose reaction is, “You want me to hack into _what_ now?”

“It’s an animal shelter, a charity in Texas,” Stiles says. “Come on, face it, this is not the weirdest thing I’ve ever asked you to do.”

“But a charity,” Danny protests. “It feels wrong.”

“Search for a Cure was a charity, and you didn’t have a problem with them,” Stiles points out.

“Okay, yeah, but we both knew their charity was a front for the other stuff they were doing.”

Stiles sighs. “I’m not asking you to do anything that’s going to hurt the poor little puppies, Danny. I just want to know if someone made a donation on February twelfth this year, and if so, if you can get the banking information.”

“So you want me to hack an animal charity and then a bank. Super.”

“Come on. You know being part of my exploits is thrilling. Didn’t you get a job offer because of your help with Search for a Cure?”

“Um, well, if you consider ‘being recruited into an illegal hacking group that targets white supremacist organizations’ as a job offer, sure.”

Stiles laughs. “You say that like you didn’t leap at the chance to join.”

Through a combination of wheedling, bribery, and extortion, Stiles gets Danny to agree. He takes a quick look at things and says it probably won’t take him long. A few hours later, just as they’re finishing up with dinner, Stiles’ phone buzzes to indicate that he has an email. He leaves the others washing the dishes and goes to see what it says.

‘Okay, the payment came from an account at Wells Fargo registered to a Chelsea Fernandez,’ Danny’s email reads. ‘There’s no phone number associated with it, but there is an address. It’s a P. O. Box in El Paso.’

Stiles does a quick web search to confirm that Chelsea Fernandez didn’t exist before two years previous. That, the donation, and the bank being in the southwest seem to confirm that it’s really Corinne. Stiles pulls her up on the DMV and the picture is a match. The bank might not have a phone number associated with the name, but the DMV does.

“You really found her,” Derek says, clearly impressed.

“I really did,” Stiles says.

“So what now?”

“Now, I run things by my dad and Uncle P,” Stiles says. “We’ll go from there.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles can’t help but fidget nervously as his father draws Peter down to sit beside him on the sofa. “Okay, out with it, you little miscreant,” Tom says. “What did you want to talk to us about?”

“Malia,” Stiles says. “Specifically, Malia’s . . .” His mind goes blank. “Birth . . . giver.”

“Mother?” Tom supplies.

“Yeah, right. Mother.” Stiles swallows. “I, uh, I did positively identify her. And I have a . . .” He rakes both hands through his hair. “A, uh, a thing that you call people on. Number.”

“Phone number.” Tom frowns. “Stiles, calm down. We knew you were looking for Malia’s mother. You told me, and I told Peter.”

“I know, I do, but I told you that she was probably dead and it turns out that she very much isn’t, and what if I call her and she wants to take Malia away? And you guys would be really sad and it would be terrible and you might hate me afterwards – ”

“Stiles,” Tom interrupts, “we’re not going to hate you.”

“She can’t have Malia,” Peter interjects, his tone calm but with a bit of a blue gleam in his eyes. “She gave up legal right to her when she left her to the adoption agency. The files are sealed, but they wouldn’t have taken her without the mother’s signature. So I don’t particularly care if she wants Malia back. She can’t have her.”

Tom sighs a little and squeezes Peter’s hand, rubbing his thumb over Peter’s knuckles. “That is technically accurate,” he says, “but honestly, Stiles, I’m not really worried about it. She’s had plenty of chances to look for Malia and she hasn’t. It’s pretty clear that she’s not interested in being involved in her daughter’s life.”

“We-e-e-e-ell,” Stiles says, squirming uncomfortably. “That’s probably because she’s on the run from, uh, the Skulls.” He looks down at his notes. “Calaveras! Who I absolutely, swear to God, have not been investigating. But she was. See, her friend went missing – ”

“Start at the beginning,” Peter says.

“Right, right.” Stiles takes a deep breath and plunges into it. He tells them about the missing women, the safe haven babies, the three young women who had been friends in Texas, about the way Corinne had gone out of her way to leave her baby with the Tates, the way she had tried to warn them and then had run afterwards to protect Malia.

Peter listens with his eyes closed during all of this, and when Stiles runs dry, he says in a completely calm voice, “Did the woman who confessed to the Tates’ murder commit it?”

“I don’t think so,” Stiles says. “I thought so at first, but – the Calaveras have this very specific way of killing. The WLO has used them before, I think, for other high-priority targets. They’ve been active enough that I think a high-ranking member of the Calaveras must have a strong anti-werewolf sentiment.”

Peter is nodding slowly. “So when work from the cartels was slowing down, they migrated up here to be a hit squad for the WLO – and probably other like-minded organizations.”

Tom frowns. “Okay, I can see that happening, but they seem to have been more involved with this facility in Toledo than any of the other WLO business.”

“Yes, but that makes sense,” Peter says. “Ninety percent of what the WLO did was simple murder. It wasn’t necessarily something that required a lot of talent – and when it did, Kate handled it herself. The majority of the targets the WLO focused on were murdered by contract killers, like the one who confessed to the Tates’ murder. But abduction – that is an entirely different ballgame, and much more difficult, particularly with a shifter.”

“My guess is that Calaveras got involved after the disaster in Chicago,” Stiles says. “They accidentally killed a bunch of babies and suddenly every law enforcement officer in a hundred mile radius was looking for them. Getting test subjects would have become a lot more difficult, so they contracted out.”

“Took women from all over the country, so the pattern wouldn’t be noticed,” Peter says, nodding. “A group like Calaveras would have the time and mobility to do that, whereas freelance contractors who aren’t used to communicating with each other wouldn’t.”

“But what they apparently didn’t count on was Corinne Valencia,” Stiles says, with a slight smile. “Someone who was not only deeply entrenched in shifter resistance, but also familiar with Calaveras through her family in Mexico. When her friend Jessica went missing, she went looking for her. She recognized the pattern, and managed to lay a trap for them. Or at least, so I would assume. We don’t know exactly _what_ happened after Corinne was abducted from New Mexico. We only know that all the babies turned up on doorsteps six days later.”

“I would be interested to ask her,” Peter says. “Regardless, this doesn’t change my opinion on her desire to be a mother to Malia.”

“If she weren’t on the run from Calaveras – ” Stiles begins.

“They haven’t found her. She’s obviously good at what she does. She could get a fake identity for herself and the child, move somewhere out of Calaveras’ reach. There are entire continents where they’d be safe.” Peter waves this aside and says, “Prior to the Tates’ murder, I would believe she only wanted her daughter to have a better life than she can provide. But leaving her after that, a vulnerable child with no one to protect her – not going back a week or a month or even a year after their murder, once Calaveras would no longer be watching – there can be no reason for that beyond that she didn’t want to be saddled with a child.”

Stiles winces a little. “I guess that’s probably true.”

Tom squeezes Peter’s hand and says, “Peter’s being harsh, but I tend to agree with him. I can see how Corinne would have thought she wasn’t what was best for Malia – but if she really had an interest in being Malia’s mother, she would have done everything she could to _be_ what was best for Malia.”

“Should I even call her, then?” Stiles asks, fidgeting.

“I think you should,” Tom says. “She did care enough about her to try to warn them when the others were being killed. I think she should know that her daughter is okay, that she’s living a good life. However,” he adds, seeing that Peter is about to speak up, “I do think you should make it clear to her up front that you are not offering her custody of her daughter. If she’d like to see Malia, that’s fine. She can negotiate that with us, not you. But I wouldn’t want to have her come here thinking she’ll be getting her daughter back, because we’re not letting her go.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, nodding. “Yeah, okay, I can do that.”

“I can call her, if you want,” Tom offers.

“No, I want to. If she doesn’t want to come here at all, I’d like to ask some questions about what happened to Calaveras, so I can tell Agent Estrada.”

“Okay,” Tom says, then adds, “this was some good work, kid. As always.”

Stiles flushes a little. “Well, you know me.”

“I do. But I’m proud of you.” Tom reaches out and tousles his hair. “Not just for finding a woman who didn’t want to be found. But for _not_ investigating Calaveras after I asked you not to. Thank you for that, kiddo.”

At this, Stiles smiles a little. “Yeah, I really _don’t_ want to end up in the hospital again. I guess maybe I’m finally growing up.”

“Don’t do it too fast,” Tom says. “Nobody wants that.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles has to take several deep breaths before he dials the number registered to Chelsea Fernandez. He’s calling in the evening, hoping that she’ll answer, because he knows he can’t leave a message, not for this. And if she sees multiple calls from an unknown number, she might spook. He’s written down what he wants to say, because he’s afraid he’ll forget too many words if he has to do it on the fly.

One the third ring, a woman picks up, somewhat warily. “Hello?”

“Hi, is this Chelsea Fernandez?” Stiles asks, and she confirms that it is. “I, uh, my name is Przemyslaw Stilinski. I’m kind of hoping that you might know who I am. I’ve done some work against anti-werewolf groups – ”

“You took down the Argents. Yeah, I know who you are.” She still sounds cautious, but a bit warmer. “How did you get this number?”

“Uh, skullduggery,” Stiles says. He’s hoping that coming at it from this angle will make him seem like an ally, and not scare her by throwing her daughter into things right away.  “I was sort of hoping I might be able to meet with you. I think – feel free to correct me if I’m wrong – that we have common interests. I have some things I’d like to ask you about the facility you raided in Toledo.”

There’s a brief pause. “That part of my life was over a long time ago. I don’t think there’s anything I can help you with.”

Since that tactic didn’t work, Stiles plays the other card. “It’s also about your daughter.”

“My . . . daughter.” The words are quiet. “You know about her?”

“Yeah. She – ”

“We can’t talk about this over the phone,” she says abruptly. “I’ll come to see you. But it needs to be public.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, having been prepared for that. “There’s a coffee shop right by the center of town that makes great lattes and will save me a table in the corner. It’s called Java Express, and it’s usually pretty busy most of the morning.”

“Ten o’clock on Friday morning,” Corinne says. “And come alone. If I see anyone with you, I’ll leave.” She hangs up without waiting for him to confirm. He grimaces a little, because that means he’ll have to miss a class, but it’s worth it.

Derek has been sitting on the bed, listening, and at this, he says, “She spooks easy.”

“I probably would too, if I’d been on the run from a group like the Skulls all these years,” Stiles says, and Derek snorts quietly. “Sorry that you can’t come along. But you can wait close by so you can rescue me if I need it.”

Derek nods. “The library is just down the street. I can hang out there.”

“Okay.” Stiles lets out a breath, letting his nerves ease down. “I wish I’d had a chance to issue the whole ‘I’m not calling you for you to come take her away from my dad’ speech. But I guess she might even realize that she’s been adopted; she could think she’d been captured or was in trouble or something.” He pushes a hand through his hair. “I guess we’ll see what she says on Friday.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles is practically jumping out of his skin Friday morning. He’s up at eight, despite the fact that he usually sleeps in every chance he gets. At nine, he leaves for the coffee shop, even though it’s only about twenty minutes away. Derek comes with him and gets some tea, then says he’s going to walk around the block just to look for any danger before he settles in at the library. He must not find any, because Stiles gets a text a few minutes later saying that he’s found a book and he’s there if Stiles needs him.

He’s way too jumpy for a lot of caffeine, so he gets himself a green tea and sits down at the table in the corner. He’s pretty sure that Corinne will want her back to the wall, but he’s not going to sit there with his back to the entire café while he waits for her. So he sits down and plays on his phone and watches people come and go, trying not to fidget too terribly.

“Is this seat taken?” someone asks, in a heavy accent. Stiles looks up. It’s definitely not Corinne Valencia. This woman is older, with pronounced wrinkles and red hair that’s graying at the temples. When Stiles just blinks at her, she pulls the chair out and sits down across from him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Stilinski.”

“Who are you?” Stiles asks, thinking that Corinne might have sent a surrogate if she was too paranoid to appear herself.

The woman smiles and extends a hand to shake. “My name is Arya Calaveras.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I want to say "I couldn't leave you on that cliffhanger for too long" but truth be told I just really love this chapter =D
> 
> also I tried to find out who originally said the thing about milkshakes and racism but it's been all over the internet so I don't know where it started, alas

 

For a long minute, Stiles can only stare at the woman as she sips her coffee. “Calaveras,” he finally says, trying to keep his voice even. He gently puts his hand over his phone, thinking he’ll slide it into his lap to call Derek.

She nods at him, still smiling. “I wouldn’t call for help or try to turn on your recorder. You see my man waiting for his drink?” She tilts her chin towards a tall man wearing a leather jacket, his shoulders hunched up. “He’s prepared to shoot everyone in this café, if it comes to that. But we’re not here to hurt anybody, Mr. Stilinski.”

“You’re a hit squad for the WLO,” Stiles retorts.

“We _were_ a hit squad for the WLO,” Arya corrects. “They don’t exist anymore, thanks to you. You ruined our bottom line,” she adds with a laugh. “But that’s not why I’m here. I just want to talk about Corinne Valencia.”

Stiles meets her gaze. “If you think I’m going to tell you anything, then you don’t know a damned thing about me.”

“Fair enough,” Arya says. “I miss meeting men of your caliber, to be honest. Things were different in the old days. Organized crime was . . . organized.”

“I don’t see why people get so nostalgic over the past,” Stiles says. “Calm down. We still have milkshakes and racism.”

Arya gives a little snort. “So how about, instead of asking you questions, we can just drink our coffee while we wait for your friend to get here.”

Stiles’ stomach gives a little twist. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it. You don’t care about me. You want her. But how did you know she was going to be here?”

“Oh, we bugged your phone ages ago,” Arya says, brushing this aside as Stiles’ jaw sags. “We’ve known what’s been happening every step of the way. You do fine work, Mr. Stilinski. We’ve been looking for Corinne Valencia for eight years. You found her in three months. But then again, she wasn’t trying to hide from _you_.”

“Son of a bitch,” Stiles says, as a piece or two falls into place. “You used me.”

Arya nods and sips her coffee, unperturbed. “We knew you wouldn’t be able to help looking for Malia’s mother. All it took was a nudge here, a bit of help there . . . and you led us right to her.”

“But how . . . Jesus, this has been a set up _from the beginning_.” Stiles feels sick. “You must have heard somewhere that Peter and my dad were planning to adopt. Talia would have mentioned it to the local alphas, because pack expansion has rules. You put Malia right in their path, you knew that someone like Peter would relate to her.”

“It _was_ a little tricky to convince that second foster family to give her up,” Arya agrees. “But they yielded to some persuasion.”

Stiles rakes both hands through his hair. “Look, I get that you’re pissed that Corinne broke into your facility and stole the babies, but you’re seriously this desperate to find her? Why?”

“Why indeed?” Arya doesn’t reply, stirring her coffee instead.

Stiles eyes’ narrow. “She took something, didn’t she. Or she knows something.”

Arya takes a drink of her coffee. “Ms. Valencia was very thorough at the Toledo facility she broke into. She not only took the babies with her, but she destroyed all the research _and_ killed all the scientists. The only thing left is what she took with her, and we would like it back.”

“Well, I’m not going to sit here and be bait for her,” Stiles says, pushing back his chair. “You can look for her on your own time.”

“Sit down, Stiles,” Arya says, as Stiles moves to get up. “My employee has specific instructions not to start with you. He’ll shoot that pretty barista first. Then that elderly couple in the corner.”

“Sure he will,” Stiles says. “People will run screaming, there will be sirens, police, chaos. Corinne will take one look at it and turn around and go the other way, and you’ll lose your chance to catch her. You don’t dare cause a fuss, and we both know it. Your employee won’t be shooting anybody.”

Arya’s smile widens. “Brains _and_ balls. I can see how you’ve come as far as you have. But I’m surprised you’re willing to let us walk away.”

“I can’t do anything to you. We both know that, too. I’m outnumbered and outgunned. Plus I made certain promises to my dad about _not_ taking on a cartel’s former hit squad.” Stiles shrugs and finishes his tea. “So it all comes down to what each of us want most. For me, that’s to walk away in one piece. And for you . . . that’s Corinne Valencia. If you let me leave quietly, there’s still a chance you can catch her.”

“But what’s to stop you from causing a fuss and spooking her?” Arya asks. She reaches out, quick as a snake, and grabs Stiles’ phone. Before he can stop her, she drops it into her cup of coffee.

“Oh, come on,” Stiles says.

Arya just smiles at him. “My employee will walk you to your car. That way you can’t pull the fire alarm or borrow a phone.” She beckons to the man standing at the bar, and he walks over. “You don’t have to worry about him hurting you. If Corinne doesn’t show up today, we may still be able to use you as a resource. We’ll be in touch, Stiles.”

Stiles shakes his head and walks out of the coffee shop without another word. He’s frustrated beyond belief, but he thinks he’s done the best he can. Corinne Valencia hasn’t stayed off the radar of Calaveras this long by being stupid. She’ll have to take care of herself.

“How far are we walking?” the man asks, annoyed, after the first five minutes.

“Dude, it’s impossible to park in downtown,” Stiles snaps back. “I parked in the lot by the grocery store up the street. You don’t have to walk me if you don’t want to.”

The man shakes his head but shoves his shoulder, which has Stiles snarling in his direction. He finally gets back to the Jeep and gets in, slamming the door. He watches as the man walks back towards the coffee shop, rounds the corner and disappears from view. “Great. Just perfect.” He doesn’t have his phone, so he can’t call Derek. He’ll have to walk _back_ into downtown to get him at the library and tell him what happened, use his phone and see if he can send cops to the coffee shop.

He’s just about to hop back out of the car before a voice behind him says, “Hello, Stiles,” and he nearly jumps onto the ceiling. He wheels around to see Corinne Valencia sitting in the backseat of the Jeep. Now that she’s sat up, he sees how she had folded herself between the seats and pulled a sheet over herself that was the same color fabric as the interior. She looks just like she did in the pictures, just with a few more worry lines around her mouth and eyes. It’s the look of someone who has lived a hard life.

“Jesus Christ!” he sputters. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

Corinne shrugs, clearly not at all sorry. “I’d prefer to have this discussion on the move, if you don’t mind. The sooner I get away from Calaveras, the happier I’ll be.”

“Sure. Yeah.” Stiles starts the Jeep and backs out of the parking space. “Any particular direction?”

“I left my car at the Days Inn on the north side of town. You know it?”

Stiles nods and turns onto the main road. “How did you know Calaveras would be here?”

“I pretty much always assume Calaveras is going to be any place that I need to be,” Corinne says. “Especially when someone calls me out of the blue and tells me to go there.”

Stiles winces. “I’m not working with them. I swear to God. They used me.”

“It was a good strategy on their part. How’d you find me?”

“The donations you make to Jessica’s animal shelter,” Stiles says, figuring that she might as well know, so she can keep anyone else from finding her later. “Wait, let me back up.” He gives a quick summary of what he had done after finding out about her identity in New Mexico having been abducted. Corinne listens in silence.

“You’re as good as they say,” she finally says. “But don’t worry, I know you weren’t working for Calaveras. You aren’t the type.”

“Super anti-werewolf, huh?” Stiles says. “I figure they must be, since they took up working for the WLO.”

Corinne nods. “That’s Arya’s doing. She took over the group after her aunt was killed in the eighties, and steered it in that direction. Hates werewolves with a burning passion. My uncle told me about them. When Jessica disappeared, I knew it had to be Calaveras. Managed to get a low-ranking position there to put in an order to target my fake identity, and that got me to the facility.”

“Nice,” Stiles says. “But . . . I guess you were too late to help Jessica, huh.”

“Yeah. She was already dead by the time I got there. Most of the women were. It was just the babies, most of them only a few weeks old.” Corinne shakes her head a little. “But I don’t know why you wanted to talk to me about it. That facility got shut down ages ago.”

“Arya said – or at least implied – that they were still after you because of something you had taken from the facility.”

Corinne looks at him blankly. “And?”

“What is it?”

“You don’t know?” Corinne is frowning, confused. “But you said you wanted to talk to me about my daughter.”

“I do. Malia. She was found feral in the Oregon woods, and she . . .” Stiles’ voice trails off as he processes Corinne’s expression. “She’s not your daughter? But you – you were the only werecoyote who was abducted – ”

“What?” Now Corinne is even more confused. “I’m not a werecoyote. I’m a werewolf.”

Stiles swears. “Estrada, that _bastard_ – he must have been working for Calaveras the whole time, of course, how could I not see that? He’s the one who told me about you, about your abduction and your fake identity, he knew if he said you were a werecoyote, I would assume that you were Malia’s mother and go looking for you.”

Corinne says nothing.

“But then – if Malia’s _not_ your daughter, who did you think I was talking about?” Stiles asks, turning slightly so he can give Corinne a questioning look. He starts to think about everything that’s been said over the past two minutes. “That’s what you took from the facility? One of the babies? But why would Calaveras care about getting the baby back? They killed all the others. Why would this one baby . . .” He sucks in air as he realizes there can only be one reason. “Oh my God. They did it, didn’t they. They cured her. She – if they could reverse engineer what they did – ”

“Pull over,” Corinne says abruptly. Stiles winces a little but does as she asks, pulling onto a side street and then over to the side of the road. Corinne sits with her eyes closed for a moment. “Twins,” she finally says. “Jessica’s babies. She had twins. Jessica was a werewolf, but her father and uncle were werecoyotes. You can never be sure which one will come through when two shifters of different kinds have a baby. It can pop up generations later, even be affected by the environment. Malia, without a pack – the werecoyote genes are what came through. I should have just left her on a doorstep, the way I did the others, but – she was Jessica’s. That’s why I gave her to Carol. And I kept the other baby myself. Carol was the only person I told, and I didn’t even tell her that the baby had been cured. Only that I didn’t think I could keep them both.”

“Jesus,” Stiles says. “Do you realize what this means?”

Corinne looks up at him, tired and even a little bit sad. “It means that if Calaveras gets a hold of Marisela, every shifter in the world is at risk of them finding out how the cure worked. It means that I have to do everything I can to protect her. I’m sorry, Stiles.”

“Sorry?” Stiles is perplexed for a moment before he sees her shift. She lunges over the seat, and he only barely manages to pull away far enough for her to miss his throat. Her teeth sink into his shoulder instead, and he sees the crimson gleam of her eyes as she pulls away. “You – you’re an alpha,” he chokes out.

She doesn’t say anything, but jumps forward again. Stiles slams on the gas, and she’s thrown back into her seat as the Jeep’s tires squeal. His heart is racing in his chest. He has no phone. He can’t call for help. He’ll have to drive himself to the hospital. Corinne starts climbing over the seat again, and he hits the brakes. She flies forward and goes through the windshield, hitting the ground hard enough to be momentarily stunned.

Stiles pulls the shoulder of his shirt away from his shoulder to see the telltale black fluid. “Oh, God,” he moans, and goes for the glove compartment. There’s a rescue medication in it, one that he’s carried everywhere since the day he had gotten out of the hospital after he had gone into bite rejection the first time. He jams the needle into his thigh through his jeans and presses the plunger, yelping at the pain despite himself. Then he tosses it aside and hits the gas again, just as Corinne is staggering to her feet.

Without a phone to call ahead to the emergency room, all he can do is get there as fast as he can. At least he’s not far. The hospital is right at the edge of downtown; it’ll only take him ten minutes. He drives like a moron, swerving around other cars and even briefly driving in the oncoming lane to get around some people, skating through two yellow lights and one that’s solidly red.

He parks right outside the entrance, knowing the Jeep will be towed but not even caring, yanking his shirt off to reveal the wound as he bolts through the doors. “Hey, your frequent flier is back,” he says to the receptionist, whose eyes widen when she sees him. “Bite rejection.”

She’s on her phone and Stiles is – he’s on the floor. Why is he on the floor? He doesn’t remember getting on the floor. He realizes he must have had a seizure. Bite rejection is even faster the second time than it is the first, with the immune system already primed to attack at the first sign of trouble. He’s being lifted onto a stretcher and someone is getting an IV into him. It’s getting hard to breathe. He feels like he’s drowning.

“He’s crashing,” someone says, and Stiles jerks back to awareness as someone puts a mask over his face. He yanks it off and grabs the person by the wrist.

“Tell – tell my dad – ”

“Stiles, we need to – ”

“No!” Stiles knows that he might never wake up from the next time he goes under. “Tell my dad – there are – ” He can’t remember the _word_. He’s so frustrated that he thinks he might cry. “Two girls – from the same womb. One worked. One didn’t. He has to – protect them both. From the skulls. Promise me. _Promise_ me you’ll tell him.”

“I promise, Stiles,” the nurse says, and slides the mask back over his face. He gasps for breath but it won’t come. He feels the pinch of another needle in his arm, and everything goes black.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Tom is going through some paperwork for a vandalism case when his cell phone rings. It’s an unknown number, although local, so he picks it up formally. “Sheriff Stilinski.”

“Sheriff, this is Melanie at Beacon Hills Hospital,” the voice says, and Tom nearly drops his phone. “Your son is here, it seems he’s been in an accident.”

“I’m on my way,” Tom says. “Did you call Derek?”

“I don’t have his number.”

“Okay, I’ll do it.” Tom hangs up with her and puts his Bluetooth in as he gets into the Cruiser. He hates the damned thing, but he has to admit it’s made his life easier. “Call Derek,” he says, and Derek picks up on the first ring. “The hospital just called me and said Stiles is there.”

“What?” Derek sounds more confused than worried. “But he was – he’s at the coffee shop. Meeting with Corinne. He wouldn’t have left without calling me.”

“I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Tom says, peeling out of the station parking lot and flicking his lights on. “All I know is that the hospital says he’s there.”

“Okay. I don’t – we came together, I don’t have my car, so you’ll probably get there first. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Okay. Will you call Peter and Talia?”

“Yeah.” Derek hangs up without saying goodbye, and Tom focuses on driving. He gets to the hospital about ten minutes later, and frowns when he sees the Jeep still sitting in the ambulance bay, front windshield shattered, just waiting to be towed. He’ll have to deal with that later. He heads inside, prepared to accost the first person he sees.

The woman at the front desk has clearly been waiting for him, because she stands up when he comes in and gestures for him to come over to the double doors that lead into the rest of the ER. “Where’s Stiles, what’s going on?”

“He came in with bite rejection,” the woman says.

Tom feels his stomach twist. He doesn’t know as much about bite rejection as Stiles does, but what he does know isn’t good. And he knows that it’s always much more serious the second time it happens. “That – that doesn’t make any sense, though – he wasn’t even going to be seeing any werewolves today – ”

“I don’t know, Sheriff. He’s in treatment now, but they had to sedate him. He was having too many seizures for them to get him intubated, and – ” The woman is clearly trying to stay calm and professional. “I’ll let the nurse know you’re here. She’ll come see you as soon as she can to give you an update.”

Tom nods, folding his arms over his stomach and taking several deep breaths. “Okay. Thanks.”

He has what feels like a million questions, but he knows that she doesn’t have answers, so he forces himself to go back to the waiting room, and tries not to pace. He glances at his phone to see that he has a text message from Peter which says, ‘We’re on our way’. After a few moments, he goes out to the Jeep to take a look. There’s blood on the driver’s seat, where his injury must have been. He doesn’t know whether or not it’s where Stiles was attacked, although he can’t imagine why else the windshield would be broken. It’s probably a crime scene, so he goes inside and talks to the security so he can make sure it isn’t towed.

It’s a long twenty minutes that follow, and he tries to stay calm and breathe. Peter comes in with Malia trailing behind him, clinging to his wrist with both hands. “What happened?” Peter asks, his voice calm, almost soothing.

“I have no idea,” Tom says. “He was meeting with Corinne at the coffee shop at ten. Told me he’d call me afterwards. Instead I get a call from the hospital, saying he’s here, with bite rejection.”

Peter’s eyes fall shut for a moment. He knows as well as Tom does how fatal a second round of bite rejection is. He reaches out and takes Tom’s hand, twining his fingers through Tom’s. “Where’s Derek?”

“He’s on his way. But he seemed just as confused as I was.”

“Did Stiles say anything to anybody about what had happened?”

“I don’t think he had time.” Tom has to stop and take a deep breath before he can keep talking. “From what they said, it sounds like he was already in pretty bad shape by the time he got here. And he drove himself here – the Jeep is outside in the ambulance bay.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Peter says. “No point in waiting for an ambulance when he could drive himself here. But I’ll go take a look and a sniff.”

Tom nods, and Peter transfers Malia’s hand from his own to Tom’s. He sits down and pulls Malia onto his lap. “What’s bite rejection?” she asks, her tone quiet, small.

“It’s kind of like an allergy,” Tom says, trying to phrase it in a way that she’ll understand. “You remember we read that book that had the boy who was allergic to bees? Well, Stiles is allergic to werewolf bites. If a werewolf bites him, he gets very sick.”

“Oh.” Malia shifts a little. “Is he going to be okay?”

Tom lets out a breath and feels tears stinging at his eyes. It’s so familiar. He remembers when they first found out how sick Claudia was, and Stiles had sat on his lap just like this and asked the exact same question. It wasn’t any easier to answer a second time. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I hope so.”

Peter comes back in and says, “Other than that there was an alpha in his car, I didn’t pick up anything useful.”

Tom frowns a little. “It is kind of interesting, though. That the alpha was in his car, not that he was bitten on the street and then went back to it. It probably explains why he drove himself here.” He looks up as Derek bursts into the waiting room, his face drawn and pale. When Tom tells him why Stiles is there, he gets even paler. “They’re getting Stiles stabilized. We don’t know much yet.”

Derek pushes both hands through his hair. “I don’t understand what could have happened,” he says, his voice shaking. “He was in the coffee shop. I was waiting for him just down the street. He was going to text me when he was done and then meet me at the car. I don’t know why he wouldn’t have done that.”

“Or why an alpha werewolf would have been anywhere near him,” Peter says, frowning slightly. He looks up as the doors into the ER open, and a woman comes out. They fall silent as she walks over, and Tom realizes he’s squeezing Peter’s hand so hard that it has to be hurting him. He can’t bring himself to let go.

“Okay, we’ve gotten Stiles stabilized,” she says, and Tom lets out a breath. “But he is heavily sedated. He went into respiratory failure and we had to intubate him and put him on a ventilator.”

“Jesus,” Derek mutters. “And the full moon is over two weeks away . . .”

The nurse nods. “Dr. Rana is going to come talk to you when they’re done getting Stiles settled in isolation, but I wanted to come let you know how he was doing. And there’s something else you should know.” She’s frowning slightly. “Stiles said something to me before we put him under, but I don’t know what it means.”

“What did he say?” Peter asks.

“He said to tell you that there are two girls from the same room.” The nurse’s brow furrows further. “One worked, one didn’t. And you have to protect both of them from the skulls.”

Tom blinks, then looks at Peter and Derek to see if this makes sense to them. “The skulls are Calaveras,” Derek says. “He kept forgetting their name, and that was what he called them. But I don’t know what the rest of it means.”

“Me neither,” Peter says. “Can we see his things?”

“I’ll grab them for you when I have a second,” the nurse says, “but I know why you’re asking, and he didn’t have his phone on him.”

“That’s even weirder,” Tom says. The nurse glances up as there’s a page over the intercom, then apologizes and hustles away. “Why wouldn’t he have his phone?”

“Corinne Valencia was really paranoid,” Derek says. “If she had insisted Stiles leave his phone somewhere before she would talk to him, he would have done it. How that leads to him being here in bite rejection, I have no idea.”

“Then let’s find out,” Peter says. “You stay here with your daddy, all right?” he adds, giving Malia a kiss on the forehead, and then Tom a kiss on the mouth, before he turns to walk away.

Malia sniffles. “Where are you going, Papa?”

Peter turns back, unable to help the claws and fangs and bright blue eyes, but not afraid to let her see. “Papa’s going hunting.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Okay, I think we're out of terrible cliffhanger territory and back into regular mystery-solving territory. =D

Derek exchanges a look with Tom, one which he hopes gets across his desperation and his fear, before he jogs after his uncle. He reaches Peter just as he gets to the parking lot. “Let me help,” he says.

Peter shakes his head. “You should be here, with your mate.”

“I can’t,” Derek chokes out. “Peter, I can’t. Being on the other side of that wall from him, able to see him but not touch him or scent him – it’s fucking torture. I know you hated it too. And if Stiles was awake, if my being here was a comfort to him, I would spend every waking moment at that wall. But he’s not. And I can’t just sit here and watch him and wait for him to wake up. Please. Give me something to do.”

Peter studies him for a moment, then nods. “All right,” he says, and Derek lets out a breath. “Actually, you being here will be very helpful. I only know the bare bones of Stiles’ investigation, but I gathered that you were helping him. I’m going to need to know everything he had found out, and see all his files.”

“Okay. They’re at the den. Should I – ”

“Not yet. We’re going to retrace Stiles’ steps, for starters. On the way, you can tell me what you know. Start at the beginning.”

Derek follows Peter back to the car and gets in the passenger side. Peter heads for downtown, while Derek tells him about Stiles’ investigation, giving him as much detail as he can remember. Peter listens mostly in silence, occasionally stopping Derek to clarify a point, but not saying much. By the time they get to the coffee shop, Derek has told him as much as he can remember.

“There are a lot of things about this that do not make sense,” Peter says, heading inside. Derek agrees, but lets Peter take the lead. He’s not sure exactly what Peter intends, but he knows that his uncle knows what he’s doing. Peter heads up to the barista with a smile and glances at her nametag. “Hello, Ashley. Was Stiles in here earlier?”

The baristas at Java Express all know Stiles; it’s the coffee shop closest to the community college and he’s there at least twice a week. Even if he weren’t a minor celebrity, they would know him. They don’t know Peter, but they do know Derek, so when the barista glances at him questioningly, he gives her as reassuring a smile as he can muster. “Yeah, he came in around nine thirty and was here about an hour. Why?”

“He had a car accident,” Peter says, and her eyes widen. “We think it might have something to do with his investigation. He met someone while he was here, right?” he adds, and Ashley nods. “Hispanic woman, dark hair, probably about my age?”

“What? No.” Ashley shakes her head. “No, it was an older woman with short red hair. Her name was Arya.” She gives Peter a somewhat anxious look and adds, “I remember because Arya is my favorite character in Game of Thrones, so it was kind of neat having someone come in with the same name. She ordered an iced cappuccino. Paid cash.”

Peter grimaces a little. “Did they leave together?”

“No. They sat and talked for ten minutes, maybe? And then Stiles got up and left. She didn’t go with him.” Ashley is chewing on her lower lip. “But the man she came in with left right after Stiles did. They weren’t together, but . . .”

“But he might have been following him. What size was her drink? Do you remember?”

“A medium. Why?”

“Because a medium would have been easy to drink the entire thing while she was here, and then throw the cup in the trash on her way out. Do you mind if I look through your trash?”

“Go ahead,” she says.

Peter heads over for the trash can that’s between the corner table where he knows Stiles would have been sitting and the door. “I assume you would have said something if you knew of an Arya involved in Stiles’ investigation?” he adds, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves.

“Yeah. Do you carry those with you everywhere?”

“As it happens, I do.” Peter starts going through the trash. A moment later, he bites out a curse, lifting out a plastic cup with the name Arya scrawled on the side – and Stiles’ phone, thoroughly saturated with coffee. “All right. Whoever this Arya was, she took Stiles’ phone and destroyed it. He left, and whoever was with her followed. Stiles obviously went back to his car. Probably didn’t come to get you because he didn’t want you in danger, or maybe they told him not to.”

“Maybe he was the alpha that bit Stiles?”

Peter shakes his head. “The scent of an alpha will linger for hours, even in a place with lots of people coming and going. There was no alpha in this coffee shop. Do you know where Stiles parked?”

“Yeah, at the lot by the grocery store.”

“Okay.” Peter walks back to the bar. “Ashley, might I have a bag to put this in?” he asks, and she hands it over. Then Peter follows Derek out of the coffee shop and down the road. When they get to the parking lot, he stiffens. “There was definitely an alpha here.” He sniffs cautiously, and follows her trail to the side of the road, where it stops. “She must have come in a taxi or an Uber.”

“There’s no such thing as an alpha werecoyote, is there?” Derek asks.

“No, coyotes have no pack hierarchy. They are omega, one and all.” Peter starts back towards his car. “Let’s find out who this Arya is.”

They go down to the police station. Derek calls Tom and checks in on the way there. He says he’s still waiting to see Stiles, that he’s called Talia and she’s heading to the hospital to keep him company. Scott and Cora will probably come along as well, he says, which Derek knows means the whole pack is probably going to turn up. He tries not to think about Stiles, alone and hurting, because he knows that thinking about that is going to drive him crazy. He needs to focus right now, focus on finding whoever hurt Stiles and making them pay.

Tom agrees to call down to the station and tell Parrish to give them anything they need, so Parrish is waiting when they come in. He takes Stiles’ phone and the cup and dusts them for prints. There’s nothing on the phone, but the cup itself has some. “They’re a little smudged from the condensation, but I think this one is clear enough.”

“How long does it take to run them?” Derek asks.

“About fifteen minutes,” Parrish says, and when Derek grimaces, he says, “Sorry, guys. It’s a big database.”

“That’s fine,” Peter says. “There’s something else I want to do in the meantime. I’m guessing you had a call or two about an erratic driver downtown?”

“How’d you know?”

“Stiles drove himself to the hospital. He knows how dangerous bite rejection is, and he knows how crucial getting treatment quickly is. He was probably driving like an idiot, and there may have been someone else in the car with him. I’d like to see the footage from every traffic cam between the Kroger downtown, where he was parked, and the hospital.”

“Okay. I’ll get on it.”

Peter turns to Derek and extends his keys. “Go back to the den. Get all of Stiles’ files, and then a change of clothes for each of us.”

Derek blinks. “Are we going somewhere?”

“I suspect that we will be, if that fingerprint belongs to who I think it belongs to, and I won’t want to go back to the den a second time. Waste not, want not.”

Derek thinks about asking Peter what his theory is, but decides it’ll just be a waste of time. If Peter’s wrong, it doesn’t matter. If he’s right, he’ll hear about it once they have proof. “Okay,” he says, and takes the keys.

It’s harder than he would have expected to keep his thoughts off Stiles while he drives. He keeps thinking back to the last time Stiles was in rejection, to those endless days in the hospital while all he wanted was to hold his mate. He can’t stop thinking about how dangerous bite rejection is, how much the danger grows the longer it is until the full moon. He keeps wondering how he could have prevented this, even while knowing that there might not have been anything.

Walking into their house is even harder. It’s empty, and quiet. The entire pack has probably converged on the hospital by now. Walking into that space, saturated with Stiles’ scent, nearly makes him break down completely. But he squares his shoulders and swallows it down. There will be a time and a place for that, but it isn’t now. Now, he has to make sure that Stiles is safe. And that means finding the person who hurt him.

He grabs Stiles’ laptop and all the files he keeps on paper, which is somewhat easier said than done, given Stiles’ proclivity to make enormous posters and tie them together with string. But he gets it done. He grabs a change of clothes for himself and then grabs some of Stiles’ for Peter. He’s not wasting time going back to the main house; Stiles and Peter are very close to the same size.

When he gets back to the station, Peter comes out to the car before he can get out. “Arya Calaveras,” he says.

Derek just blinks at him. “What was someone from Calaveras doing at the coffee shop? Stiles wasn’t investigating them, I _swear_ , he had promised his father he wouldn’t and he kept that promise.”

“They were looking for Corinne Valencia,” Peter says. “They’ve been looking for her for years, and they finally figured out a way to find her. Corinne knew how to hide from the cartels, from the criminals. But she didn’t know how to hide from someone like Stiles – or maybe she just didn’t realize she had to. They used Stiles to find her.”

“Jesus,” Derek says. “He must be so pissed.”

Peter snorts out a laugh. “Knowing Stiles, yes, he probably was. Traffic cam footage shows that he was alone while he was driving erratically. But one camera did get a snap of him before he was bitten. There’s a woman in his back seat, but she’s hard to see. It might be Corinne, but it might be someone else.”

Derek grimaces. “But – I’m confused. Calaveras couldn’t have known Stiles was looking for Corinne. How would they have known she was going to be here?”

“Because they’re the ones who set him on Corinne’s path to begin with. Take Old Country Road and head towards I-5.”

“Where are we going?”

“San Francisco. I have a few questions for the staff at New Beginnings.”

“You think this whole thing was a setup?”

“I do. From start to finish. They probably knew when Malia was found, but on her own, without whatever knowledge of them her parents could have possessed, decided she was no threat to them. But as soon as they found out we were thinking about adopting, they plopped her down right in our path and waited. She was a good pick for us, it’s true, but I have a feeling we would have been steered towards her if we hadn’t noticed her.”

Derek is nodding slowly. “Even what the woman told Tom – none of it was untrue, but it was geared to make her seem like a good fit. That she was feral, and lashed out – immediately drawing the parallel with you.”

“Yes. So I would like to know who brought Malia to their facility – and especially if she was alone.”

Derek isn’t sure what that means, then remembers what Stiles had said. “Two girls from the same room. You think that’s connected?”

“Maybe. I can’t parse what else it might mean.”

Derek swallows hard as he signals to get on the freeway. “Are you sure – it’s safe to leave them?”

“Talia will be at the hospital by now. Nobody will touch them while Talia is there. I wouldn’t want to take off for a week, but a trip to San Francisco is safe enough. We probably won’t even have to stay the night – I just want the option. I have a feeling we might need to talk to Malia’s other foster family. It can’t be coincidence she got returned to New Beginnings right before we went there. And I don’t know where that family will be, so it might take some extra time to get to them.”

“Yeah.” Derek is frowning, mulling over what Stiles had said to the nurse. “Two girls. One worked, one didn’t. That makes it seem like they’ve tried this before.”

“It does. Although I don’t recall Stiles having investigated any other girls about Malia’s age.”

“That means that Malia might not even be Corinne’s daughter, though. Corinne could be the alpha werewolf.”

“It could, although it is possible for a werewolf to have a child which is a werecoyote, werecougar, et cetera. Epigenetics is a fascinating study. And when Graciela Fuentes was abducted, they found werecoyote blood in her car.” Peter shakes his head. “There’s a lot of questions I don’t have answers to yet, so let’s take it a piece at a time. We’ll find out where Malia came from and go from there.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

It’s strange to be sitting in this hospital waiting room with Malia in his lap. It’s so different from every other time. But he can’t help but think back to the last time Stiles had been in rejection, how the police officer had come to try to arrest Peter for violating the idiotic house arrest he was under. He remembers it like it was yesterday, standing between the two men, protecting Peter. In the years since, Peter has often mentioned that as the moment he fell in love with Tom, without even realizing it.

Talia had arrived about ten minutes after Peter and Derek left. She seems surprised by Derek’s departure, but Tom isn’t. He remembers how hard it had been for both Derek and Peter, watching Stiles through that glass wall. He also knows how hard it is to sit and wait, to not be able to do anything. He knows that if he were in the hospital, Stiles would be the same way. Stiles and Peter are so much alike in some ways. Derek is quieter, but Tom wouldn’t expect him to sit and wait for news.

The rest of the pack show up in twos and threes. The only exception is Laura, who stays at the den with her children and the twins. Jonathan is out of town on a business trip, although he’s due back that afternoon.

“Sheriff?” The nurse beckons to him. Tom gestures for the rest of them to wait, and follows her back through the double doors. He glances around, but Stiles is nowhere to be seen. Instead, a familiar doctor walks over.

“Dr. Rana,” he says, his voice a little strained. “How is he?”

“He’s stable,” she says. “They’re getting him settled upstairs. It’s a bit more of a process this time because he’s been heavily sedated.”

“The nurse mentioned that. That . . .” Tom can barely finish the sentence. “He went into respiratory failure.”

“Which is a broad term,” Dr. Rana says. “With bite rejection, we treat at the first sign of trouble. Stiles started having trouble breathing, so we put him on a ventilator. It’s to improve and assist his lung function, not to replace it. Given the intubation, it’s safest to leave him in a medically induced coma for now.”

Tom takes a deep breath and then manages a nod. “What else?”

“Now that we’ve gotten him stabilized, we ran some blood work. There might be some kidney damage. We’re going to keep a close eye on that and start him on medication if need be. The problem is . . . the closer monitoring we have to do, the greater the risk of infection. Even if we follow protocol. The full moon is over two weeks away. Which also increases the risk of complications.”

“I know.” Tom rakes a hand through his hair. “What do you . . . what are the odds, I guess is what I want to know.”

“It’s not the kind of thing that can be put into numbers,” Dr. Rana says. “Without complications, his recovery is almost certain. But the instant a complication comes into play . . . it drops dramatically, to be honest. All we can do is monitor him carefully, take every precaution, and make sure we treat anything that goes wrong at the first sign of trouble.”

Tom nods. “Okay.”

“They’ll come get you once he’s been settled upstairs.” Dr. Rana shakes his hand and hurries off to see her next patient.

Tom heads back into the waiting room and sees everyone staring at him. “Stiles is stable,” he says, in a carefully measured tone. Several of them breathe sighs of relief, but Talia is still frowning worriedly. “He’s not out of the woods yet, but he’s okay for now.”

“I wanna go see him,” Malia says, clutching at Tom’s wrist.

“We have to wait for now, okay?” Tom asks, rubbing a hand over her hair. “They’re getting him settled and comfortable. We can go see him in a little bit, but we won’t be able to go in the room. They have to protect him from our germs.”

“I don’t have germs,” Malia says. “Coyotes are germ free.”

Tom bites back a smile despite himself. “It’s just to be extra safe.”

Malia sniffles but nods. “When’s Papa going to be back?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart.” Tom sits down, feeling a decade older than he had when he had gotten up that morning. Malia crawls into his lap, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, and Tom pats her on the back.

“I take it that Peter is trying to figure out who hurt Stiles?” Scott asks, and Tom nods. “Is Derek with him? Do they need any help?”

“Yes, and no,” Tom says. “Peter wants us to stay here and protect Stiles, protect each other.” He strokes Malia’s hair and adds, “Trust me – Peter doesn’t need any help.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Peter is playing on his phone as they drive into Pleasant Hill, the San Francisco suburb that New Beginnings is in. A few moments later, the GPS starts giving directions. “Follow the good lady’s directions, please,” Peter says.

“You’re a lot harder to work with than Stiles,” Derek says, getting off the highway. The directions lead them to a bakery. Derek looks at it and says, “I’m just not going to ask.”

“Bribes work better than threats when you’re trying to come in through the front door,” Peter says. “Wait here. I’ll only be a minute.”

Derek all but throws his hands up in the air, but does as he’s told. Peter comes back with a box of pastries a few minutes later, coffee for himself and tea for Derek. Then he sets the GPS to bring them to New Beginnings. “Now, I don’t want you coming in with me,” Peter says, “but I’m going to clone my phone on yours and leave the microphone on so you can hear what I’m doing. Will that help?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Derek lets out a breath. “What _are_ you doing?”

“I want to get a sense of how Sharon reacts to me coming in unexpectedly. She might have been involved, but it might not have been voluntary. So let’s just see what she does.” Peter taps at both of their phones for a few minutes before handing Derek’s back to him and sliding out of the car. He walks in with the box of pastries and smiles at the woman at the front. “Is Sharon in?”

The receptionist clearly isn’t nervous; she smiles and says sure. A few moments later, Sharon walks up to the desk. She does a bit of a double take when she sees him, but she looks more surprised than nervous. “Mr. Hale, it’s so good to see you again. What brings you here?”

“I was in the neighborhood on business and thought I would stop by,” Peter says, setting the box of pastries on the counter. “I brought these for the staff and the kids.”

“That’s so sweet,” Sharon says. “Thank you so much.”

“I thought you might like to see some pictures of how Malia’s doing,” Peter says.

“I would love to!” Sharon says. Her tone, body language, and scent are all one hundred percent sincere. Sharon clearly wants the best for Malia. Peter takes out his phone and swipes through the folder he has of Malia in her cute little sundresses, learning to read, climbing trees, helping Stiles in the kitchen. Sharon – and several of the other aides – coo over all of them. “It’s so nice to see her doing well. She had such a hard time when she first came here.”

“She still won’t wear shoes,” Peter says, laughing. “But she’s made a lot of progress on the whole.”

They exchange pleasantries and Sharon thanks him for coming by, and Peter heads back to the car, mulling things over. Derek looks at him, somewhat anxiously. “What now?”

“If Sharon’s involved, she doesn’t know who she was working for or why,” Peter says. “That means we have to be careful with her. I imagine Tom and Stiles would be upset with me if I damaged her. We need to go get a burner phone.”

“Of course we do,” Derek says, rolling his eyes but turning the car back on. He finds a store nearby and Peter goes inside to get a pre-paid cell phone. He’s tapping it against his lips thoughtfully as he considers his next move. “What now?”

“Now we find out if she was involved.” Peter pulls up texting and puts Sharon’s number in.

“How do you have her cell phone number?”

“Oh, I cloned her phone while I was inside.” Peter continues to type. Derek leans over to see what he’s writing. ‘If Peter Hale comes to see you, don’t tell him anything,’ he types, and then hits send.

The response comes very quickly. ‘He was just here, but he didn’t ask any questions. What’s going on?’

‘Need to meet you,’ Peter types back. ‘Las Juntas Park. One hour.’

‘Okay,’ Sharon replies.

Peter switches back to his regular phone to see what Sharon does next, which is nothing. “So she’s not freaking out,” he says. “She’s puzzled, maybe a little worried, but she clearly isn’t aware of the gravity of the situation.”

Derek nods, clearly understanding that ‘Peter Hale might be after you’ is, indeed, a grave situation. “What are we going to do for an hour?”

Peter checks his watch. “We should eat something,” he says, and manages a slight smile. “Stiles would be upset if we didn’t take care of ourselves.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Derek realizes that it’s nearly two PM, and he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. They had passed several restaurants already, so he heads back to a nearby sub shop, where they each get a sandwich. Peter eats absently, mechanically, leafing through Stiles’ records. He stops on the page about Graciela Fuentes’ abduction.

“I wonder . . .” he murmurs.

“What is it?” Derek asks.

“The most likely person to have bitten Stiles is Corinne Valencia,” Peter says, and Derek nods in agreement. “But if she’s an alpha werewolf, then two things are called into question. The first is whether or not she’s Malia’s mother. And the second is whether or not she’s Graciela Fuentes.”

“You said she still could be,” Derek says, “and she came here because Stiles called her about her daughter. He said that on the phone.”

Peter nods. “If there is a werecoyote in her background, as a grandparent or even great-grandparent, it’s possible that a werewolf would have a werecoyote as a child. Without Corinne’s family tree, we don’t know. But here’s the thing. Calaveras was using Stiles to look for Corinne. They wanted to be _sure_ that he would focus on her. And this report is different from the others. Do you know why?”

“Oh, yeah, Stiles got it from the FBI guy, Agent Estrada. His card should be in there somewhere. Graciela didn’t come up in his initial search because nobody filed a missing persons report for her.”

“How did the FBI know about the investigation?”

Derek frowns. “I’m not sure. I guess they’ve been trying to find Calaveras, and so they had any case involved with it flagged. Including the missing women.”

“Mm.” Peter considers that for a long moment. “No. It’s too coincidental. Stiles is investigating, doesn’t find Corinne. Then some FBI agent just happens to show up on his doorstep with the intriguing story of this woman who doesn’t exist, who was abducted, and has a report saying she’s a werecoyote when as far as we can see, there’s strong evidence that she is not? That’s too much to buy.”

At this, Derek grimaces a little. “It didn’t seem that way at the time.”

“I’m not blaming Stiles for not noticing. It’s far more clear in hindsight, particularly since we now think that Corinne is a werewolf.” Peter reaches out and squeezes Derek’s shoulder. “So what that means is that Agent Estrada is either working for Calaveras . . . or he isn’t an FBI agent at all. His offices are supposedly in San Francisco. Perhaps we’ll pay him a visit, too.” His eyes glint blue, and then he checks his watch. “For now, we’ve got a date with Sharon. Let’s go.”

Derek nods and hastily finishes his sandwich while Peter gathers up the files. Ten minutes later, they’re at the park. Sharon is standing by one of the benches, looking a little worried. Peter walks over to her with Derek in tow, and she blinks at him. “Mr. Hale, I – what a coincidence, I was just – ”

“Meeting with your contact from Calaveras?” Peter finishes for her, and she jumps like she’s been bitten. “They’re not coming. I was the one who texted you. I have some questions that I need you to answer.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Sharon says desperately. “I wasn’t trying to hurt your family.”

“Nevertheless, my family is hurt, grievously so, and someone is going to answer for that.” Peter is aware that his eyes are shining blue, that his voice is too quiet. Derek reaches out and squeezes his shoulder, and he takes a deep breath, trying to ground himself. He takes his phone out and starts recording. “Who brought Malia to your facility? Start at the beginning.”

“She came in through the normal channels,” Sharon says, and Peter looks skeptical. “She did, I swear. Social services brought her. Everything was normal until the second foster family. They brought her back a week later, which was odd because everything had been going well up to that point. They worked on a farm and said she’d been adjusting pretty well. And they didn’t want to tell me why they were bringing her back. Just that things had changed and they couldn’t keep her.”

“And then?”

“The next day, a woman came to see me. Maybe in her sixties, red hair, with a Hispanic accent. She said that she had a family in mind for Malia, and I had to make sure you took her home with you. Which was pretty easy, because you gravitated to her immediately. I said the things she told me to say, and didn’t ask some of the questions I normally would have asked.”

“Why?” Peter asks, softly.

Sharon swallows. “She had – a list. Every child we had placed in the past five years. Pictures of them, with their new families. She said if I didn’t cooperate, she would kill all of them. _All_ of them. These kids – they’re the world to me. I didn’t know why she wanted Malia with you, but I couldn’t just let her – ”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Derek asks.

“I _did_ ,” Sharon says. “The next day, I got an anonymous text with a news article about how one of the kids had been severely injured in a car accident. His younger sister, also adopted, had been killed. Then the police called and told me that there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue my case. Mr. Hale, _please_. She killed a little girl who had nothing to do with this. What else could I do?”

“Nothing,” Peter says. “No, in your shoes, I would have done exactly the same. If my shoes were anything like yours, which they decidedly are not.”

“So when you texted today – I assumed that you had started asking questions about why she had been placed with you, but to be honest, I’m still so confused. I don’t even know why they had me do this.”

Peter is deep in thought, and Derek answers her. “Malia’s birth mother worked against Calaveras before Malia was born. They’ve been looking for her. They knew if someone like Stiles started looking for her, they could tag onto his investigation and use it to find her.”

“Oh my God,” Sharon moans. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I need some information from you,” Peter says. “The name and address of the foster family that returned Malia. I need to go see them.”

Sharon nods. “Of – Of course.”

“And the name of the child who was killed and the date of the accident,” he adds. “There might be evidence of who was behind it. Text it to me within the hour, and I won’t come back.”

“Peter,” Derek says quietly. He looks back at Sharon and says, “Thanks for your help.”

“Is Malia okay?” she asks. “Please, I’m worried about her.”

“Malia is fine,” Derek says. “It’s Stiles who was hurt, and we need to find out who hurt him and where they are now.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sharon says.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Derek says. “None of this was your fault. Just get us that information.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	11. Chapter 11

Derek is getting antsy and frustrated as they head north, into central California. The time away from Stiles, knowing that he’s suffering, is driving him up the wall. He knows it won’t be better, might even be worse, if he was actually in the hospital. But it’s still hard to focus on anything else.

It doesn’t help that the information they get from the Sanders family isn’t really useful. They confirm what Peter and Derek had suspected – that a red-haired woman had come to their house and told them to return Malia to New Beginnings or face terrible consequences. They had refused. The next night, their house had caught fire. They had barely made it out alive, and lost almost all their possessions. It had spooked them so badly that they weren’t even looking at adopting anymore.

“What about Agent Estrada?” Derek asks, since they’re two hours away from San Francisco by now.

“Mm. I had a thought about that. I want Tom to talk to his contacts at the FBI to find out if he’s actually an agent before we call him. How we handle it will depend on that.”

Derek takes that to mean ‘if he’s actually an FBI agent I can’t bury him in a shallow grave’ and nods. “Okay. Then what now?”

“Now . . .” Peter lets out a breath. “We head back to Beacon Hills to check in. I’ll probably spend the rest of the night at the police station. I want to call every taxi company, as well as Lyft and Uber, as well as review a lot more traffic camera footage, to see if I can track down where Corinne came from. She might still be there. You’d be welcome to join me there, but honestly, it’ll be pretty boring.”

“I guess I’ll see . . . see what it’s like at the hospital and then decide,” Derek says. Peter nods and falls silent. Derek normally doesn’t mind silence, but right now it’s a little unnerving. He blurts out, “Tom would have called if anything had, had happened with Stiles, right?”

“Yes, I’m sure he would have,” Peter says. “Today, tomorrow, Stiles will be fine. The danger grows as time goes by, as we risk exposure to infection – I’m sorry,” he says, seeing Derek flinch. “You don’t need to hear about that.”

“It’s fine.” Derek decides that not talking is better. “Mind if I put on the radio?”

“Feel free.”

Derek finds a station with halfway passable classic rock and oldies. His throat tightens when he hears the music that Stiles has always loved. It takes effort to keep focusing on the road, and he drives faster than he means to.

They get back to the hospital at about nine PM. Peter parks and looks at the hospital for a few moments. When he doesn’t move, Derek asks, “Are you going to come up?”

“I should. I know that. Tom is hurting and I . . . should be there for him.” Peter stares straight ahead, not looking at Derek. “But I don’t know what to say. I’m not good with this sort of thing. I’m much better at finding threats and taking care of them, than I am at dealing with the pack members when they’re wounded.”

Derek nods a little. “I know. But you know, when I was hurting, after the fire . . . all I wanted was for someone to hold my hand. For someone to be there. I knew there was nothing they could say. Even if they could take away the physical pain, the emotional pain . . . there was no way to take that away. Words would have been meaningless, and I didn’t want to hear them. So it’s okay if you don’t say anything. Just hold him and let him know you’re there. Whatever he needs, you’re there.”

Peter lets out a breath. “Thank you, Derek.” He gets out of the car, and Derek follows. As expected, most of the pack is upstairs. Most of the kids are gone, although Malia is still there, and Aaron and Laura are gone, having taken then home. The other teenagers are there, huddled in a corner. Talia is sitting in the corner, with Malia in her lap. Tom is sitting in the chair closest to the door into the inner room.

It’s just like last time. The déjà vu is so strong that Derek is nearly sick with it. He looks past the glass wall, at Stiles. He looks different. Paler, and with a mask secured over his face. There are more monitors than there had been the previous time. Derek just stares at him for a few moments, watching his chest rise and fall. Peter walks over to Tom and embraces him from behind, pressing his cheek into Tom’s temple. “How is he?”

“Stable,” Tom says, his voice quiet, but clear. “He crashed pretty hard, though. Went into respiratory failure. That’s why he’s on the ventilator. They, uh, they said it was just to support his lung function, though, not to replace it.”

Peter presses a kiss into his cheek. “I suppose telling you to go home and get some rest won’t get me anywhere?”

Tom shakes his head. “I’ll stay here tonight. Did you guys find anything useful?”

“We did make some progress, but I still have a lot to do.”

“Okay.” Tom rubs both hands over his face. “Let me know if I can help. I’ve told Parrish to give you whatever you need.”

“All right. I’m going to head down to the station and keep working.”

Talia stands up. “I’ll take Malia back to the house so she can get some sleep.”

“I wanna stay with Daddy,” Malia whines.

Tom stirs a little at this. “You can stay here with me tonight, sweetheart.” To Talia, he adds, “She won’t sleep if you take her home anyway. But the rest of you should go.”

Peter clears his throat, and says, quietly, “Talia . . .”

“I’ll stay,” Talia says immediately. “I won’t let them out of my sight.”

“Thank you, sister.” Peter gives Tom another hug, this one lingering, and then gives Malia one as well. “I’ll be in touch,” he says, and walks out of the room. Derek goes over to his mother and sits down next to her, resting his head against her shoulder. She puts an arm around him and pulls him close.

“So what do we know so far?” Tom asks, looking over at Derek. “We’ve got nothing else to do. You might as well bring me up to speed.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

The station is quiet and nearly empty. That’s fine with Peter, who doesn’t want to answer a lot of questions about what he’s doing. He has Tom’s badge number, and absolutely no qualms about impersonating an officer of the law. Beacon Hills has four cab companies. He calls each of them and has them check to see if they had dropped a woman off downtown the previous morning.

None of them had. So he tries Uber and Lyft. They’re more stingy with the knowledge, but he manages to persuade them to part with it.  Neither of them had dropped Corinne off at the parking lot either. Peter sighs at this dead end. She could have hitch-hiked, or stolen a car, or possibly found some way to hide her scent until she arrived. There were a lot of options.

Since that’s a dead end, he starts researching Agent Javier Estrada. The business card has a phone number, which gets him to a voice mail stating that it’s an FBI field office. That won’t get him much of anywhere until morning, but he doubts that Estrada would have put the number on the card if it wouldn’t get the caller somewhere that would verify his identity. He calls the main FBI office instead, and asks to verify Estrada’s identity. They have no agent by that name, in San Francisco or any other field office.

“So who are you really?” Peter muses. He fiddles with the card for what feels like a long time, startling slightly when he sees that it’s past one. He’s been drifting. His focus is good when there’s need, but he can only hold himself together for so long.

He needs to move. And this is a good time to check around to various hotels. Corinne wouldn’t have wanted to stay in town for long, so she probably had only arrived on Thursday – and there was a good chance she would have arrived late. There are about a dozen hotels of varying quality in Beacon Hills. He visits each one of them and shows the picture of Corinne Valencia to the desk clerk.

He doesn’t really have the authority to do what he’s doing, but by now, news has spread. Everyone knows that Stiles has been hurt. Whoever Peter is looking for, nobody wants to get in his way. He hits paydirt on the seventh try. The clerk at the Days Inn says that Corinne had come in on Thursday around midnight, then checked out the next morning, before she had left to meet Stiles. The woman behind the desk is a little iffy on giving him the information, so Peter calls Parrish. He’s on the overnight shift, so he calls down to the hotel and gives them the go-ahead, and they give the information to Peter.

It’s yet another identity, and some quick research confirms his suspicion that she had put it together just a few days prior – or had it made but hadn’t used it yet prior to Stiles’ call. Either way, there won’t be much information on it. It hasn’t been used since leaving the hotel. Wherever she is now, she hasn’t paid to stay there.

He sits down with the traffic camera footage between the hotel and the grocery store parking lot, and now he’s able to find Corinne, but it doesn’t tell him much. The car is indeed one she had stolen, and it had been found several hours later.

“That’s a whole lot of nothing,” Peter murmurs, looking through the pictures. He glances up as he hears approaching footsteps, a familiar heartbeat.

“Hey, Uncle Peter,” Cora says softly. “I brought you some breakfast. Have you been up all night?”

“Mm.” Peter picks up a donut and starts eating automatically. He remembers that this is his niece, that he should at least try to be comforting. “But I’ve made some progress. How is Stiles?”

“No change.” Cora gives him a slight, wan smile. “That’s good, right?”

“It is.” Peter takes the cup of coffee from her and says, “Are you heading back to the hospital after this?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you tell Derek to come down and see me when he gets a minute? I don’t want to call him and wake him, if he’s managed to get some sleep.”

“Okay.” Cora leans in and gives him a hug, rubbing her cheek against his temple, before she leaves the room. Peter continues to absently eat the donuts while re-reading the information that Estrada had given Stiles. He’s formulated a plan somewhere in the back of his mind after the last few hours.

Derek comes in about an hour later, unshaven and with dark circles under his eyes. He looks blearily at Peter, who pours him a mug of coffee. “It’s time to talk to our friend Estrada.”

“Okay.” Derek rubs both hands over his face, back through his hair, and then takes a swig of the coffee. “What are we saying to him?”

“I want you to tell him the truth. Stiles was meeting with the elusive Graciela Fuentes, but turned up in bite rejection. Pretend you have no idea who he is or that he works for Calaveras. Ask him for help figuring out who attacked Stiles, get him to come here so we can see him in person.”

Derek nods. “Let me have a second cup of coffee.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Estrada arrives at about two PM. Derek manages to talk Peter into laying down in Tom’s office and getting a couple hours of sleep. They’ve formulated a plan, and he’s sitting in the conference room with Stiles’ files when Estrada arrives. Angie shows him back, and Derek greets him with a handshake. “Thanks for coming,” he says, letting the tremble in his voice through.

“How is Stiles?” Estrada asks.

“He’s, uh, he’s stable for now. I just – I have no idea what could have happened to him. He didn’t talk to me much about the investigation. I feel so lost.”

Estrada nods gravely, and gestures to the files. “May I?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course, go ahead.” Derek waits until Estrada has picked up the first folder, then says, “Oh, that reminds me – I wanted to make some copies for you. Sorry, I meant to do it before you got here but I dozed off for a while. Let me just – ” He takes the folder back and sorts through it. “Okay, this is all stuff you have already, and here are Stiles’ notes. Let me go make a copy real quick.”

He leaves the conference room and hands the folder itself over to Peter, before going to the copy machine. When he comes back in a minute later, Estrada is looking through the dossiers on the missing women that Stiles had compiled.

It’ll take about fifteen minutes for them to run Estrada’s fingerprint, so Derek has to keep him occupied that long. That’s easy enough. Stiles had done a _lot_ of research. Derek basically just sits there while Estrada paws through it, explaining parts of it to Derek, who pretends that this is all very new for him. He nods and asks questions and refers frequently to the alpha that had attacked Stiles and how there was no alpha involved in the case.

It’s been twelve minutes when the door opens and Peter slides in. Estrada looks up, and Peter smiles and says softly, “Oh, don’t get up, Rodrigo.”

Estrada freezes.

“Did you know there are _four_ open warrants on you?” Peter says, keeping his tone conversational. “Plus a hefty bounty from Los Lobos Carmesí. I’m rather tempted to turn you in for that. I don’t need the money, but damn would it be satisfying.”

“Who are you?” Estrada manages.

Peter’s still smiling. “Think about it, Rodrigo. You know exactly who I am.”

Estrada lets out a breath. “Peter Hale.”

“Very good. So, now that we’re all acquainted, I have some questions, and believe me, you want to answer them.”

“I can’t tell you anything about Calaveras,” Estrada says, folding his arms over his chest.

Rather than replying to him, Peter turns to Derek. “This is what we call the loyalty of a doomed man. He knows that all his options are bad, so he clings to his pack, or the humans’ version of it, without a thought as to whether or not they would do the same for him. He knows that if he tells us anything, Calaveras will hunt him down and destroy him. He knows if he _doesn’t_ tell us anything, I’ll do just as bad if not worse.”

“You can’t do anything to me,” Estrada says. “This is a police station. The worst you’re going to do is turn me over to the closest place that has an open warrant on me, and send me to prison.”

Peter outright laughs. “Oh, that’s adorable. Do you think anyone in this station, anyone in this city, would stop me from doing whatever I want to you? You and yours have, in all likelihood, just killed the sheriff’s son.”

“That wasn’t us!” Estrada protests fiercely, and realizes a second too late that Peter had baited him.

“Well, then,” Peter says, smiling, “you have no reason not to talk to me, do you.”

Estrada’s jaw firms up. “Corinne Valencia is a werewolf, not a werecoyote. We put that in the file so Stiles would think she was Malia’s mother, and go looking for her.”

“Why would she have attacked Stiles?”

“I have no idea. She might have assumed he led her into a trap intentionally, instead of being used without his knowledge. But that’s just a guess. We didn’t even know she was there; after she didn’t come into the coffee shop, we assumed she had sensed the trap and hadn’t even come to California.”

Peter nods a little, tapping his mouth with one finger. “Before he was sedated, Stiles said something about ‘two girls from the same room’. Does that mean anything to you?”

Estrada looks blank. “No.”

Derek can hear Estrada’s heartbeat, and it remains steady. He thinks he’s telling the truth, although he supposes he can’t be sure. It frustrates him, because he feels sure that Stiles somehow stumbled upon something important. Something that Corinne was willing to kill him to keep him from telling anyone else. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

“We need to meet with Arya Calaveras,” Peter says. “I want you to set it up.”

Estrada shakes his head. “The Head of Calaveras doesn’t just meet with people.”

“Not even if your life is on the line?” Peter asks, quirking an eyebrow, and Estrada shrugs. “So you’re expendable to her. Well, that is certainly good to know.” He stands up and walks around the table, letting his claws trail along it as he goes. Estrada tries not to watch him, but can’t help it. Peter stops behind him, resting one hand lightly on his shoulder and squeezing. Derek sees blood bloom through Estrada’s shirt, and his teeth clench. “Might I see your phone, Rodrigo?”

“It won’t help you find her,” Estrada says, taking his phone out of his pocket and setting it on the table.

“Do you think so?” Peter asks, picking it up. “Well, you can start by unlocking it.”

Estrada scowls at him but does as he’s told. Derek glances over Peter’s shoulder as he thumbs through the contact list. There’s nothing interesting there. He goes to the recent calls and finds only one number, and a series of short calls. He dials it, and Derek hears several clicks before it starts ringing. Then a woman’s voice says, “Answering service,” in a crisp and professional tone.

“I need to get a message to Arya Calaveras,” Peter says.

“I can take that message for you.”

Peter sets down the phone and then grabs Estrada by the hand, snapping one of his fingers. Estrada screams involuntarily. Peter lets him go and picks the phone back up. “You can tell her that Peter Hale would like to see her.”

There’s a click. The line has disconnected. Peter holds up the phone and says casually to Derek, as if he had asked, “Did you hear those clicks at the beginning of the call? Relays. To stop it from being traced.” He tucks the phone into his pocket and says to Estrada, “I’ll be keeping this for now.”

Estrada mutters profanities underneath his breath. Peter stands up, and Derek follows him out of the room. Peter walks over to Parrish and says, “Hang onto him for me for now, if you would?”

Parrish nods. “No problem.”

Peter turns back to Derek. “We’ll have to wait for Arya to contact us, presuming she does.”

“I don’t see how Arya can help us,” Derek points out. “We’re trying to find Corinne, which is what Arya has been one hundred percent unable to do.”

“True. But she’ll have more information on Corinne than we do.”

“I just . . .” Derek swallows down a wave of frustration. Peter gives him a questioning look and Derek bites out, “What the fuck is the _point_? We know that Corinne is the one who hurt Stiles, but she’s probably long gone by now. He found her once, and we’ll _never_ find her again. And even if we do, it’s not like she can do anything about the fact that Stiles is, is dying. She can’t take it back.” He nearly chokes on the words. “So what the fuck does it matter if we find her or not?”

Peter’s eyes close for a long moment, and Derek can tell he’s struggling for composure. Peter knows what he’s going through, knows better than anyone else what it’s like to feel like he’s losing his mate. Finally, he opens his eyes and says, “Would you like the truth? I’m afraid I’m not very good at anything else.”

Derek nods, his throat too tight to speak.

“I think you’re right on most of those counts. I very much doubt I will manage to find Corinne Valencia, and I’m beginning to think that if she did attack Stiles, she must have had some reason for it. It’s important to remember that killing Stiles might not have been her goal. She would have had no way of knowing he was going to reject the bite. Perhaps she was trying to do something else. I have many questions about what happened, and I doubt I’ll ever get answers to a lot of them.”

“So?” Derek chokes out.

“Calaveras was not directly responsible for what happened to Stiles, but they set him on this path. They are the reason he was in danger. They’re also an anti-werewolf hate group, so yes, I would very much like to wipe them off the face of the map, given the opportunity. But that’s not why I’m doing this. I’m doing this because of what Stiles said. He said there are two girls from the same room, and he wanted us to protect them _both_.”

Derek draws in a shaky breath. He had almost forgotten that.

“I don’t know who this other girl is. I have no idea what room he’s talking about. But if Stiles’ dying wish was for us to protect these two girls from the Calaveras, I will spend every day of the rest of my life looking for her, so I can carry out that request. Do you understand?”

Derek nods, and wipes a hand over his eyes. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Thanks.”

Peter reaches out to him, cups a hand around the back of his neck, pulls him into an embrace. Derek rests his forehead on Peter’s shoulder for a minute. Finally, he manages to pull away. “What now?”

“Nothing for the moment. We’re waiting on Calaveras. Let’s go back to the hospital. I’d like to check in on my husband and my daughter.”

“Okay. But when you’re going to go meet Calaveras, I’m coming with you.”

Peter’s eyes gleam blue, and he nods. “Of course you are.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure: I love all of you so much and every comment I get screaming about frustration over the womb/room thing adds ten years to my life because I am Evil. XD

On their way to the hospital, Peter insists that they stop and pick up some food. He’s well aware that if Tom has eaten anything in the past twenty-four hours, it was probably cheap and greasy. He gets some lunch meat and some vegetables and whole-grain bread. When they go back out to the car, he sees Derek smiling slightly. “What?”

“Just . . . I’m thinking back to before you and Tom got together, and Stiles and I were trying to figure out what was going on between you two. Stiles pointed out that you would make Tom food, and watch him eat it.”

Peter nods a little. “I find it soothing, though I’m not really sure why.”

“It’s a sign of acceptance. Having your mate eat the food you bring them.”

“I suppose that’s true. I never noticed with Olivia, since she was the denmaker. Although looking back on it, I did enjoy buying her the fancy pastries and chocolates she would never get for herself. She used to say I was going to make her fat.”

“And now with Tom it’s the opposite,” Derek says, clearly amused.

Peter scowls reflexively. “You and I both know he would eat nothing but cheeseburgers if left to his own devices.” He sees the look on Derek’s face. “Stop laughing at me, nephew. Stiles would beat the shit out of both of us if we didn’t continue to oversee his father’s diet in his absence.”

“True,” Derek says.

They reach the hospital fifteen minutes later. Tom sees the grocery bags and groans. Malia, on the other hand, perks up. “He ate fries at lunch and I _told_ him he’s not supposed to eat fries but he ate them _anyway_ ,” she says, in the tone of someone who has been much aggrieved.

Peter laughs quietly and begins constructing Tom a sandwich. Tom watches this with a long-suffering expression. “If that’s low-fat mayo, I’m divorcing you.”

“Please,” Peter says. “I want it to be healthy, not inedible.” He hands over the sandwich and presses a kiss into Tom’s forehead. “How is he?”

Tom lets out a breath. “They’re a little concerned with how the original wound is healing, but other than that, he’s stable.”

“Infection?” Derek asks, his voice tight.

“Maybe. They said it was a little inflamed. They took a culture and said they’d probably start him on preventative antibiotics, just to be on the safe side.”

Peter nods a little. He glances over at where someone has hung a calendar on the wall. The day before has a red x through it, and the date of the full moon is circled. Seventeen days to go. They’re going to seem interminable.

“How are things with you guys?” Tom asks, his mouth full of sandwich.

Peter opens a can of soda for himself and sits down in the chair next to Tom. He’d rather be up and moving, but as soon as he sits down, Malia crawls into his lap. He rubs her back absently. “Estrada’s real name is Rodrigo Ibarra. He’s a member of Calaveras. There are open warrants for him, so we’re holding him for now. But he didn’t know anything about this second girl that Stiles was talking about, so I’ve left a message for Arya to see if she wants her man back. I’m waiting to hear back from her now.”

Tom nods. Peter watches him eat, watches the gears turn in his head. He knows that Tom has come to a lot of the same conclusions he has – that Corinne Valencia is the one who hurt Stiles, but her motives are still a mystery. He asks the same question Peter had asked hours ago. “Was Corinne alone at her hotel?”

“Yes. Desk clerk said she checked in alone, but I had Parrish check the room for fingerprints. It had been cleaned, so it’s possible we missed some, but it’s not like they did a full scrub on it. We found Corinne’s prints in several places, but nobody else’s besides the cleaning crew and that of an adult who was probably the last guest, probably male from the size of the print. They aren’t on file anywhere, and Parrish said they looked older. Either way, no childrens’ fingerprints.”

Tom shakes his head. “I don’t get it.”

“Me neither. Not yet. But I’m still gathering pieces.”

They sit in silence for a little while. Peter strokes Malia’s hair and Derek watches Stiles sleep. Peter can see the tension in him, see the way he periodically touches the glass wall like he’s desperate to claw his way through it. Aaron and Laura show up to visit for a little while. The other teenagers are in and out.

“Will you be staying here tonight?” Peter asks, anxious despite himself at the idea of Tom sleeping at the hospital.

Tom nods. “I’m going to have Talia take Malia back to the den, though.”

Malia, predictably, whines at this. Peter pats her on the back and says, “I’ll come stay with you if I’m able.” His phone buzzes, and he glances down at it to see that it’s a call, not a text. Arya is probably calling from a pay phone, since she wouldn’t want to use a number that could be traced. “This is Peter Hale.”

“Mr. Hale.” The voice is male, so obviously not Arya. “Be at the abandoned train station in one hour.”

“Very well.” Peter hangs up without saying anything else and checks the time. It’s nearly four. “I’m going to need to get some things from the den. Shall we, nephew?”

Derek nods, touching the glass wall one last time before turning away. He’s crying as they head back down to the car, not obviously, but just a few tears that he can’t be bothered to wipe away. Peter doesn’t say anything, lost in his own thoughts as they head back to the den. He knows how Derek feels, knows the pain of losing his mate. But he can’t stop thinking back to when Stiles had joined the pack. How he had liked Stiles, liked having someone new to talk to, someone who didn’t flinch away from him. More than anything, he thinks back to the day in the car that Stiles had told him he didn’t think the fire was an accident. It was like he had spent six years living in a fog, and in two minutes, Stiles had brought him back to life.

It’s not something they talk about, or even something he thinks about often, but he knows that Stiles saved his life.

He ducks into the house long enough to get his equipment bag, which contains helpful things for all sorts of contingencies. Derek doesn’t ask what’s in it. He doesn’t seem to care. Since leaving the hospital, he seems to have sunk into a depressed silence.

“This way,” Peter says, after parking at the old train station.

Derek stirs. “Am I coming in with you, or do you want me somewhere else?”

“You can come with me, but you’re going to stop just inside the door and make sure they don’t surround us and block our exit.” Peter pauses, then says somewhat stiltedly, “I’m glad you’re with me, nephew. These things can get quite complicated when I’m alone, and I doubt Tom would appreciate me taking stupid risks right now.”

At this, Derek’s mouth twitches into a wan smile. He nods and gets out of the car, and the two of them walk over to the door. As requested, Derek stops just inside. Peter walks the rest of the way in, sees where there’s a table with a laptop set up on it. Otherwise, the room is empty. He doesn’t see anybody at all. He scents cautiously, and although people have clearly come and gone recently, he doesn’t think anybody is still here.

The laptop has Skype open on it, and as soon as he sits down, it gives the jarringly jaunty tune that designates an incoming video call. He clicks to accept, and Arya’s face appears on the screen. “Mr. Hale,” she says. “Your reputation precedes you.”

“Yours doesn’t,” Peter replies. “I presume you prefer it that way.”

Arya shrugs. “What do you want?”

“Well, it occurs to me that we have a common enemy. I thought perhaps we could discuss terms of agreement, in that you give me all the information you have on Corinne Valencia, and I might be inclined to turn your employee over to the LAPD instead of to the werewolf vigilante group who wants to draw and quarter him.”

“Or you could return him to me.”

“It remains an option, albeit an unlikely one. I want to know why Corinne Valencia attacked Stiles.”

“And why would you be asking me? I assure you that if I had been there, it would not have happened.”

Peter regards her quietly. She’s smart, to have had this meeting over the laptop. Not only does it leave her in a safe place, it also means he can’t detect her scent and heartbeat. “You know a lot more about Corinne Valencia than I do. You’ve been chasing her for eight years. I think you know exactly why she attacked Stiles, and I presume that it all comes back to your facility in Toledo somehow.”

“I assume that she considered Stiles an enemy after he lured her into a trap.”

“No, that’s not it and we both know it,” Peter says, shaking his head. “Corinne clearly sensed the trap, since she didn’t show up at the café. But there was no reason to come all the way to Beacon Hills just to kill Stiles. She could have just stayed where she was and not responded.”

“Maybe she wanted to know how he found her.”

It’s a suggestion that actually has merit, which surprises Peter. Arya is fishing, just as much as he is. She doesn’t know why Corinne attacked Stiles either. “Perhaps,” he says, “but why not just ask over the phone, insist on knowing before she would come to the meeting?”

Arya shrugs. “Maybe she prefers to have meetings in person for the same reasons you do.”

“Or maybe it has something to do with the girl.”

Peter throws it out there to see what response he gets, and Arya blinks. It’s not much of a reaction, and he’s again annoyed that he can’t hear her heartbeat. “What girl?”

“You know very well what girl.”

Arya shakes her head. “Whatever it is you want, Mr. Hale, you will not get from me. We may have a common enemy in Corinne Valencia, but I know better than to think that the man who killed Kate Argent would ever be willing to deal with my organization.”

The call disconnects. Peter leans back in his chair. “Interesting. Very interesting.”

“What is?” Derek asks, taking a few steps inside.

The laptop starts to beep, and Peter grabs it, throwing it across the empty room. It explodes while it’s still in the air. He shakes his head a little. “Tacky,” he mutters underneath his breath, before turning to Derek. “She didn’t want to talk about the girl. Not even in a place where I couldn’t detect her heartbeat. That’s how afraid she was that she would accidentally give something away. As soon as I brought it up, she disconnected the call. And before that, she seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.”

Derek frowns, nodding. “She didn’t even stop to ask about Estrada again. Or whatever his name is.”

“It’s not surprising that she doesn’t care about her employee, but it’s worth noting. I suppose I’ll have him transferred to LA, where those open warrants are. If he makes it there alive, it’ll prove that he didn’t know anything anyway.” Peter heads back out to the car.

“You know, when you were talking about why Corinne would have come here, I thought of something,” Derek says. “I think the other girl, whoever she is, is Corinne’s daughter.”

“Why?”

“Because when Stiles talked to her on the phone, he said it was about her daughter. And if Malia’s _not_ her daughter, then you’d think her response would have been ‘who?’ or ‘I don’t have a daughter’ or something like that. But she didn’t. She said . . . I think it was ‘you know about her?’ and after that it was when she agreed to come to Beacon Hills. In fact, she said they couldn’t talk about it over the phone.”

Peter frowns a little. “But she didn’t have anyone with her at the hotel. So where is this mysterious daughter, and what is the ‘room’ that Stiles said they came from?”

“I don’t know.” Derek chews on a fingernail. “What now?”

“Now we’ll transfer Estrada, see if anyone bites down on that bait. We’ll run his phones and his financials and see if we can use them to go to any of the other members of Calaveras. I still have the file of that couple they targeted, the one who had adopted from New Beginnings. That’ll keep us busy for the rest of the day – if you don’t mind sticking around and running some errands for me.”

Derek lets out a breath, and nods. “No problem.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Tom is only partly conscious as the evening ticks by. He briefly notices it when the shift changes, at eleven, and spares a thought to wonder where Peter is. He had said he would try to come by to stay the night, but he could be up to anything. Or he could have been distracted, or forgotten. He could be wandering in the woods for all Tom knows.

He startles awake when he hears footsteps in the hallway and Malia walks in, hugging her arms over her stomach. He shakes himself back to coherency and says, “Hey, sweetie. What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Malia says, gaze on the floor. “Auntie Talia said I could stay here tonight if I would sleep.”

Tom rubs a hand over his face, trying to focus. Something about Malia seems off, but he can’t put his finger on what it is. “Where is Talia?” he asks. It seems unlike her to send Malia up by herself, with so much going on.

“She stopped to get something at the drink machine,” Malia says, and Tom nods, vaguely remembering the vending machines at the end of the hallway, by the elevator.

Malia snuffles a little, and Tom holds his arms out to her. She walks over a little hesitantly, as she often is when she’s upset, and she’s about to crawl into his lap when he suddenly realizes what’s bothering him. He holds a hand up, stopping her approach. She’s dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and has cute little sneakers. “Where’d you get those clothes? And those shoes? You hate sneakers. Who got those for you?”

Malia blinks at him, utterly stymied by these questions, and in that moment a whole lot of answers cascade into Tom’s head. He takes a deep breath and gets to his feet, saying, “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“I . . .” Malia, who isn’t Malia at all, jerks one arm forward. Tom sees the stun gun in her hand at the last second and manages to twist away before it can impact with his abdomen for more than half a second. It still delivers quite a jolt to his system and knocks him back into his chair, wincing in pain. Not-Malia turns her head towards the hallway and calls out in a panicked voice, “Mama!”

Tom is still trying to get his wits about him when a woman with long dark hair jogs into the room, and he makes a split second decision to feign unconsciousness. “You’re okay, mija,” she says in a low voice. “You got him. Good job.”

He keeps one eye open just a little so he can see her as she sets down a bag and pulls out what looks like a vial and syringe. Then she heads for the door to Stiles’ room and starts to unzip the plastic. Tom wants to leap to his feet and stop her before she can carry any possible germs in, but takes a precious second to make sure that his limbs are functioning again before he gets to his feet and pulls out his gun. “Don’t move!”

Corinne jerks around, startled, and sees the gun trained on her. “Sheriff,” she says, her voice calm, deliberate. “I know you must have a lot of questions – ”

“No, I’m good,” Tom says. “Since a miracle cure for rejection hasn’t been discovered, you must be here to poison my son and finish him off. That’s the only thing I need to know. Back away from the door. Put your hands on the back of your head.”

Corinne does as she’s told, and she’s looking at him so steadily that it seems odd to Tom. She’s not looking around, trying to find a way to escape. It only takes a second to realize what, _who_ , she’s trying not to look at. “Kid, walk over here next to your mother where I can see you.”

The girl whines a little, but does as she’s told. Tom tries to think about what his next move should be. He can see crimson starting to seep into Corinne’s eyes. He can’t win this fight, not even with a gun trained on her. He’s seen Talia in action; he knows what it looks like when an alpha throws down. The instant he stops to radio for backup, she’s going to be on him.

“What’s your name, honey?” he asks the girl who looks just like his daughter.

“Marisela,” she mumbles.

“I need you to bring me that stun gun you were using, Marisela.” Electricity is better than bullets when it comes to werewolves. A taser would be better, but the stun gun will do.

Corinne clearly knows that, because in one smooth motion, she pushes Marisela behind her and then lunges forward. Tom pulls the trigger, and the bullet hits her in the shoulder. It spins her partway around but it doesn’t do more than slow her down. She collides with Tom hard enough to throw him into the wall, and it knocks the wind out of him. She picks up the chair he was sitting in and is about to bring it down on his head when he manages to pull the trigger again. This time the bullet hits her in the abdomen, and she stumbles backwards.

By now, she’s figured out that the bullets are packed with wolfsbane. After a split second of indecision, she grabs Marisela and runs. Tom wheezes a little but manages to get to his feet, grabbing his radio. He grunts out that he’s in pursuit and takes two steps before the door at the end of the hallway slams open and Peter charges out. Tom wants to comment on his timing, but then remembers the sympathetic pain. Peter had known the instant Marisela had hit him with the stun gun, had clearly dropped everything he was doing to come help.

Peter assesses the situation in a bare instant, scenting the air to take in the blood, gunpowder, wolfsbane. “Is Stiles okay?”

Tom nods. “Got to – go after her – ”

“No.” Peter gets an arm around him and helps him sit down. “She’ll need us if she wants to counter those bullets. I’ll be able to find her. What happened? No, don’t answer that yet. Just breathe for a minute, love. You’re hurt worse than you realize and when the adrenaline wears off, it’s going to come back at you like a freight train.” He’s feeling Tom’s ribs to check for breaks as he speaks, running a hand down Tom’s spine. Tom glances up as the door opens again and Derek jogs in, out of breath. He shakes his head a little, thinking of how far they must have run. He knows Peter has all sorts of tricks that he uses, and will take the werewolf’s version of performance enhancing drugs in moments of extreme danger.

“Is Stiles okay?” Derek demands.

Peter glances up and realizes the door to Stiles’ room is still partially unzipped. He walks over and zips it closed. “Yes, he’s fine. And I believe we have answers to a great many questions now.”

“That’s great, Sherlock.” Derek looks exhausted. “How about we start with why she’s so determined to murder my mate?”

“He knows about her daughter,” Peter says.

“So what? We all know about her daughter now,” Derek says, clearly a little too upset to be rational. “Two girls from the same room, blah, blah.”

“No.” Tom looks up at this, rubbing his hand over his ribs. “No, it’s two girls from the same _womb_. Stiles – God, in a moment like that, stressed and hurt and with a time limit, his aphasia must have been kicking his ass. He couldn’t remember the word for twins, so he said ‘two girls from the same womb’. The nurse must have misheard him.”

Derek lets out a breath. “Okay,” he says, calming down a little. “Okay. I guess that explains how Corinne got in here.”

Tom nods. “The nurses have seen Malia in and out. They don’t know Corinne, but she probably just said she was a family friend. Hell, that’s how she got in here. Sent Marisela in with a stun gun knowing she’d be able to get close to me. Almost did, too, but . . .” He manages a wan smile. “I’m sure I would have heard about it in detail if someone had tried to make Malia wear jeans and sneakers.”

Peter chuckles quietly, pressing a kiss against Tom’s hairline. “That’s my mate,” he says, clearly proud of him.

“But I haven’t figured out what Stiles meant by ‘one worked, one didn’t’,” Tom adds.

“Ah,” Peter says. “That, I think, Derek and I can shed some light on.” He scents the air and says, “The little girl who was in here was human.”

Tom blinks. “Seriously?”

Peter nods. “They cured her. They actually did it. And with Malia as a control subject, they would have actually been able to _prove_ it. That’s why Corinne kept this child with her instead of just dropping her on a doorstep. Every anti-werewolf organization on the planet would have put out a bounty on this child if they knew she existed.”

“Stiles figured it out,” Derek says, and rubs both hands over his face. “And Corinne was willing to kill him to keep him from saying anything.”

“So it would seem.” Peter scents the air again. “I think I’ll go have a chat with her. Might I have one of those bullets, Tom?”

Tom nods and pulls out the clip, then takes out two bullets and hands them over. “Just in case.”

“How many does that leave you with?”

“Four. Enough to do some real damage if she comes back.”

Peter nods. “All right.” He tucks the bullets away. “Derek, I want you to stay here with Tom and Stiles. I don’t need you for this, and it’s likely to be messy. I want you to be here in case anybody else comes by for any reason.”

“Okay.” Derek sits down, looking honestly glad to get off his feet for a little while.

“I’ll be back,” Peter says absently, and walks away, as nonchalant as could be.

Tom sighs and leans back in his chair, suddenly aware that every inch of him is aching. It’s going to be a long night.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	13. Chapter 13

 

Tracking Corinne is easy. The combined scent of wolfsbane and blood is very distinctive, and not a trail that Peter would lose. He expected that she had walked, because she clearly doesn’t want to get taxis or rent cars. She could have stolen a car, but that would have come with a risk, too. With no time crunch, easier just to walk. He suspected she had paid one of the orderlies to tell her when it was safe to go in, when Tom was alone. Any of the werewolves would have instantly known that Marisela wasn’t Malia.

The trail leads him into one of the lower class areas of downtown and to a house that has a foreclosure sign in front of it. The trail goes around back, so Peter does as well. He approaches the door slowly, waiting for any sign of danger. It’s locked. He reaches into his bag for his lockpicks and lets himself in.

Inside, the scent of blood and alpha and wolfsbane are overwhelming. Peter walks quietly, but he knows that Corinne has realized he’s there. She would have heard his heartbeat the second he entered the house. So he doesn’t bother trying to hide himself. He walks into what looks like it used to be a kitchen. Corinne is lying on the floor, stripped down to her underwear, holding a bloody rag against her abdomen. Marisela is kneeling beside her, and she’s clearly been crying. There are surgical tools on a towel on the floor. Corinne has managed to get the bullet out of her abdomen, but she clearly can’t get to the one in her shoulder. The angle is bad.

Peter takes all this in and says, in a pleasant voice, “Hello, Corinne.”

Corinne grits her teeth slightly and says, “I can still give you a run for your money. Even like this.”

“Most likely.” Peter sees Corinne giving him a wary look, and holds up one of the bullets. “You’re going to need one of these if you want to live, so how about you – ”

“Gimme it!” Marisela launches herself at Peter, and Corinne lets out a surprised noise. The little girl grabs at Peter’s fist, not even flinching when he raises his arm so she’s dangling off the floor, trying to pry the bullet out of his hand.

“Excuse me, little one,” Peter says, getting her by the nape of the neck with his other hand. “I appreciate both your fighting spirit and your devotion to your mother, but we were trying to have a conversation.” He sets her back on her feet, and her sullen expression is such a perfect match for Malia’s that his lips twitch into a smile. “It seems to me that we have a common enemy. You two will never be safe until Calaveras is gone, and I’d very much like that to happen. This will be easier if we work together.”

Corinne eyes him suspiciously. “I tried to kill your mate’s son. You’re not going to work with me.”

“It wasn’t personal. You were trying to protect your daughter, which is something that I understand. Now, it wasn’t _necessary_ , and if you knew fuckall about Stiles you would have understood that. But you didn’t, couldn’t know Stiles the way I do. And now that our entire pack knows about Marisela _and_ why you’re hiding her from Calaveras, killing us to maintain the secret has become unfeasible, so I don’t believe you’d try to hurt Stiles again. By the way, lest you think I’m bluffing, I’m not. On my way here, I e-mailed my sister with the details. Unless you feel like taking on the strongest alpha on the west coast, you can’t win against us.”

Corinne lets her head drop back against the floor. In that moment, she looks completely exhausted. “You’ll only kill me when we’re done with Calaveras.”

“That remains a strong possibility,” Peter agrees. “I’ll have to discuss it with Tom and Derek and see how they feel about it. But until Calaveras is gone, we can work together. And I promise you, if I do kill you, I’ll make sure your daughter is kept safe. That was Stiles’ dying wish, you know. His last words before he passed out. To protect both girls from Calaveras.” He watches Corinne as he says this, watches the guilt and pain in her expression, files it away with what he knows about her.

“I don’t see why you need me,” she finally says. “You could kill me right now and then go take down Calaveras without me.”

“I could. There was a time when I would have. But I fell in love with a man who has very strong ideas about justice.” Peter hops up onto the kitchen counter and makes himself comfortable. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Corinne. You’re going to tell me everything you know about Calaveras. We’re going to find a way to take them down. Then, most likely, you will be arrested and tried in front of a jury of your peers. If Stiles dies, you’d be facing a death sentence. If he lives, probably only life in prison. Either way, you will have done what you set out to do – avenge your friend’s death and keep her children safe.”

“Prison, huh?” Corinne asks.

“Mm hm. I’ve been there. It was awful for me – but for someone like you, who doesn’t really have a pack, I think you could survive it. It’s also possible – not probable, mind you, but possible – that Tom will understand why you hurt his son the same way I do, and choose to let you go. It’s a decision I won’t make for him.”

Corinne presses a hand into her abdomen, which is still bleeding sluggishly. “You seem pretty optimistic about our chances of taking down Calaveras.”

Peter shrugs. “We only need to get to Arya.”

“What makes you say that?”

“She’s the only one who knows who Marisela is, and why she’s important. We captured one of her men. High-ranking, and important enough to her that she agreed to a meeting to discuss the terms of his release. But he didn’t know. If he didn’t, nobody does. Calaveras had no involvement in anti-werewolf activities until Arya took control. She’s the driving force behind this.”

Corinne nods, breathing in and out slowly. “If I go to prison, what happens to Marisela?”

“We would take her in, to be raised alongside her sister.” Peter shakes his head. “You really screwed the pooch on that, by the way. Making an eight-year-old accessory to murder? It doesn’t help your chances of Tom forgiving you.”

“I wasn’t spoiled for choice.”

Peter shakes his head a little. “I understand that after eight years on the run from Calaveras, you’ve forgotten how to trust. But you should have trusted Stiles, Corinne. You knew enough about him to come here. You knew he took down the WLO and Search for a Cure. We could have talked this through. But now we’re left with limited options. So. You’re going to get your ass up and come with me to our den, where I can be sure Marisela will be safe while we decide what to do. I’m not giving you this bullet to take care of your injury until we’ve done that, because I don’t trust you not to take off the instant you’ve gotten what you need from me.”

Corinne’s mouth purses like she’s annoyed he had seen through her plan. But she nods, putting a hand on the floor and using it to push himself up. She takes Marisela by the hand and gives it a quick squeeze, then winces. “I don’t think I can walk that whole way.”

“Not to worry. I’ve called us a ride.” Peter ushers her out the back door and around the house, where a car is idling in the driveway. Corinne climbs into the back seat gingerly, trying not to move too much, and beckons Marisela in after her. Peter goes around and gets into the front. “Hello, big sister. Thank you for the ride.”

Talia nods. “Tom and Derek are okay? What about Stiles, was he hurt any worse?”

“Tom and Derek are as okay as they can be, given the circumstances. Tom didn’t let her get within five feet of Stiles.” Peter can’t help turning slightly so he can smirk at Corinne. “But she’s not the first person to underestimate my mate for being a mere human.”

Corinne scowls at him. “Who the hell notices a child’s shoes,” she mutters, mostly to herself.

Talia half-turns, her eyes glowing crimson in the dim light. “You’re sure I can’t kill her?”

“As strange as it is for me to be the one advocating _against_ murder, yes. I need her alive for now.”

Talia lets out a breath, and the red fades from her eyes. She puts the car in reverse and starts backing out of the driveway. “Okay. Where are we going?”

“Back to the den. Corinne needs some assistance with the bullets Tom put in her, and Marisela needs a safe place to sleep. We can introduce her to Malia at a later time. I have a feeling that might be complicated and I’d prefer Tom’s help to do it. He has . . . a lighter touch with Malia than I do.”

Talia nods, then says with a sigh, “He hasn’t left the hospital since Stiles got there. I’ve been trying to convince him to leave long enough to get a shower and a few hours’ sleep in a bed, but no dice.”

“I’ll talk to him. I need his input on what we’re going to do about Calaveras, in any case. But that will have to wait until we’ve taken care of Corinne.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Tom realizes with a start that he had dozed off, as he hears the noise of the zipper into Stiles’ room. He jolts to his feet, fumbling for his gun. Derek grabs him by the arm. “Hey, it’s okay, it’s the nurse,” he says, and Tom shakes himself the rest of the way back to consciousness. The nurse is frozen, and Tom hoarsely apologizes, so she goes about her business.

“You okay?” Derek asks.

“Yeah. Shit, sorry about that.” Tom rubs both hands over his face. “Jesus, I could use some coffee.”

“Cora texted me a few minutes ago. She’s on her way over with Isaac and they’re going to stop on the way. I asked her to pick you up an Americano.”

“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.” He shakes his head. “I can’t believe I fell asleep before we heard from Peter. Have you talked to him this morning?”

“To Peter, no. My mother texted me to let me know that they’ve been playing host to his, let’s say, detainees. He mentioned not wanting to call you in case you had managed to get some sleep, since nothing was time sensitive.”

“All right.” Tom decides to wait until he’s had his coffee to call Peter. The nurse is emerging from Stiles’ room, so he says, “How’s he doing?”

“He has a bit of a fever,” she says, and Tom’s stomach drops. She sees the look on his face and says, “Now, it could be a side effect of the immunosuppressants. I’m going to talk to Dr. Rana so we can check his chart from last time and see if it happened then. The results of the culture should be back by now. She’s going to be here at seven thirty, so she’ll come in and see you as soon as she’s reviewed his chart.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Tom finally manages to check his phone and see that it’s a few minutes past seven. He’s surprised that Cora is on the move so early, but then again, he doubts any of them have been sleeping much. If Peter had showed up at midnight with a wounded lady and Malia’s twin sister, God only knows if anyone at the den has slept at all. “I’m going to head to the john real quick. Be back in a minute.”

Derek nods, and Tom goes to use the facilities and splash some cold water on his face. By the time he gets back, Cora and Isaac have arrived. His coffee is only barely cool enough to drink, but he takes several swallows anyway before dialing Peter.

“Good morning,” Peter greets him. “You got some sleep?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“You weren’t texting or calling me all morning.” Peter seems to brush this aside. “Corinne is safely in our custody. I’ve cured her of the wolfsbane but she’s still weak. Laura, Aaron, and Scott are sitting on her right now – she won’t be going anywhere.”

Tom lets out a breath. “And Marisela?”

“Talia is with Marisela, and wouldn’t let harm come to her even if the world was ending. Have you eaten?”

“Cora brought some stuff. I haven’t eaten yet, but I will after I’ve talked to the doctor.”

“The doctor.” Peter’s voice is sharp. “Is everything okay?”

“Stiles is running a fever. It might just be a side effect of his medications.” Tom pushes that aside because he doesn’t want to talk about Stiles’ condition. It’s like pouring salt on a raw wound. He can’t fix it, can’t change it, can’t do anything to alter the course of events. He needs to focus on something else if he wants to stay sane. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill Corinne.”

“To be honest, I absolutely intended to. Figured I would use the bullets to keep her talking long enough to get the upper hand over her. But as soon as I revealed them, the little girl started trying to pry them out of my hand. She was desperate to help her mother. I may yet kill her, but not in front of Marisela. Besides, she can help us. She knows more about Calaveras than we do. One way or another, they need to be taken care of if the twins are going to be safe.”

Tom nods a little. “Yeah. Okay.” He glances up as Dr. Rana walks in. “I have to go. Call me when there’s a plan.”

“Okay.” Peter’s voice softens. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Tom hangs up and turns to Dr. Rana. “Hey. What’s the news?”

“Well, Stiles did have a fever last time he was treated for bite rejection,” Rana says, and Tom sighs with some relief. “It’s about a degree higher now, but that may or may not be significant. The wound culture was negative. So for now I think we’re safe to watch without change on that regard. However, his bloodwork is still suggesting mild damage to his kidneys. I think it would be better to treat that proactively, so we’re going to start him on medication.”

Tom nods and lets out a breath. “Yeah, that. That all sounds good. Thank you, doctor.”

She gives him a reassuring smile and goes about her business. Tom slumps down into the chair with his coffee, then texts Peter a quick update. The caffeine is kicking his brain into gear, and he texts, ‘if Talia is watching Marisela, who’s watching Malia?’ He probably should have thought of that earlier, but then again, that is one benefit to being in a pack. The children are always cared for.

‘I am,’ Peter replies.

‘While you plot how to bring down Calaveras?’

‘At the moment I’m plotting to make her scrambled eggs, and figure out how to tell her she has a twin sister.’

‘Oh, geez.’ Tom rakes a hand back through his hair. ‘That’s going to be interesting.’

‘You’re not wrong. I’ll come by after she’s eaten, so prepare yourself.’

Tom tucks his phone away and updates Derek as to the situation. He listens in silence, along with Cora and Isaac. When he’s done, Cora says, “When he gets here, we can stay with Stiles for a little while so you can talk to Malia and Peter.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Tom’s stomach growls and Isaac hands him the bag of food they had brought along with the coffee. It’s not much – some pastries and some fruit – but it eases the rumbling in his stomach. He’s sure that Peter will bring him something to eat when he arrives with Malia.

He does. It’s a homemade English muffin sandwich, with cheese and egg and sausage, wrapped in foil and still warm. Tom practically inhales it, while Peter exchanges a few quick words with Derek about how things have been going. When Tom is done eating, he leaves Cora and Isaac with Stiles. Derek decides to go with them, although he keeps his distance as they settle down in one of the visitor lounges.

Malia is giving them the side eye as Peter sits down on a bench and pulls her into his lap, with Tom sitting across from them. “You’re being weird,” she says, whining.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Tom says. “It’s just been a pretty long week. We’re going to try to explain some of what’s been going on, okay?”

“Okay,” Malia says, her sulk easing back a bit.

Tom has been thinking about how to explain this, and he can’t find a good way to start. He doesn’t want Malia to think that any of this was her fault. Her parents had been killed, and now Stiles was grievously injured. If he told her why Calaveras was after her, would she blame herself? She was just a child. Could she really understand? The prejudice and bigotry that sat at the base of all of this wasn’t something that a little girl should have to worry about.

Seeing that Tom was floundering, Peter sighs quietly. He scoops Malia up and transfers her from his own lap to Tom’s, so he can face her, and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “You know about how my first mate, Olivia, was killed?” he asks, and she nods. “Has anybody ever told you why?”

“Nuh uh,” Malia says.

“Well, there are some people in the world who don’t like people who are different from them,” Peter says. “Sometimes it’s because of the color of their skin, or who they love, or how big their teeth are. And sometimes that feeling gets so strong and out of control that it makes them into monsters, and they hurt people who aren’t like them. That’s why a very evil woman killed my mate, along with several other members of my family. Do you understand?”

Malia nods. “I think so.”

“The same type of people killed your parents,” Peter says, and Malia scowls. “And we’ve been trying to find the people who did it.”

“’Cause Stiles is super smart?” Malia asks, and Tom smiles slightly.

“Indeed he is,” Peter says. “We don’t know what happened the day he got hurt. We may never know for sure. But what we do know is that he found out about a little girl who’s your twin sister.”

Malia just blinks at him. “Marisela?”

Tom nearly chokes on his coffee. “How do you know that name?”

“Mommy told me.” Malia twists a little so she can look up at Tom. “When I was little, I cried a lot. I told her I felt sad and empty. She told me it was probably because I missed my twin sister, that she couldn’t live with us but I’d see her again someday when I grew up. She said her name was Marisela. But she also told me it was super secret and I couldn’t tell anybody, ever.” She ducks her head slightly and then adds, “I forgot about it while I was a coyote, but after I came here and met Auntie Talia’s twins, I remembered. But Mommy told me not to _ever_ tell, so I didn’t.”

Tom pushes a hand through his hair. “Okay. Well, that’s . . . okay. Anyway, Stiles found out about her, and then Peter found her, last night, and the woman who’s been taking care of her.”

“Okay.” Malia looks between the two of them expectantly. “Where is she?”

“She’s back at the den,” Peter says. “We can take you to see her later, okay? For now, I have to talk to Tom and Derek about how we’re going to handle a few things that we need to deal with.”

Malia’s feet kick back and forth. “Like the people who hurt Stiles?”

“Precisely that.”

Malia bares her teeth. “I want to bite their throats out.”

“Well, we’ll have to see what we can do about that.” Tom sets her back on her feet, and says, “You can hang out with Cora and Isaac while we talk. Okay?”

“Okay.” Malia trudges back towards Stiles’ room. Derek props the door to the lounge open with a chair, so they have a view of the hallway and they’ll be able to make sure nobody unusual is coming or going.

“So what now?” Tom asks, as Derek walks in and folds himself into a chair.

Peter pinches the bridge of his nose. He looks tired, and Tom wonders when the last time he slept was. He’s sure Peter was up most of the night, and probably the night before, too. “All of this comes down to Arya Calaveras. She’s the person who poses a threat to the twins. We need to find her and . . . remove the threat.”

Tom manages a slight smile. “I appreciate you trying to work around my law enforcement sensibilities, but I know you’re going to kill her. We can’t just put her in prison. Even if we could build a case, just the fact that she knows Marisela’s been cured makes her a threat to the twins by existing.”

“True.” Peter shrugs. “You said it, I didn’t.”

“What about the rest of Calaveras?” Derek asks.

“They don’t know,” Peter says, and quickly explains his logic. “So it’s only Arya we have to take care of.”

Tom is frowning. “You’d think she would have told everybody. Or if not everybody, at least people like the Argents and Jennifer Blake. The more people she could get looking for Corinne and Marisela, the better chance she would have had of finding them.”

“That’s true,” Peter says. “One has to assume she wanted the glory for herself.”

“Personally, I’d rather share glory than have none at all,” Derek remarks.

Peter shrugs. “I’ve been doing some research into the Calaveras family. Apparently, they had an ongoing rivalry with the Argents. There’s some correspondence in the WLO files about it, actually; Gerard was annoyed at the staff in Toledo for hiring them. Arya thought Kate was unprofessional, a loose cannon, who would eventually make a mistake and bring the entire WLO down with her. Which you may note she was one hundred percent correct about.”

“So she didn’t say anything to the Argents or the rest of the WLO, but decided to take care of it herself,” Tom says, then adds, “and although she might have worked with Blake, Blake never would have worked with her. She depended on keeping her legitimate front in order to get subjects for her research. She wouldn’t have risked being associated with Calaveras.”

Peter nods. “Leaving Arya to do this herself. Which makes things much less complicated for us. Of course, it still won’t be easy. She seems highly intelligent and very cautious.”

Derek is frowning. “Can I ask a stupid question?”

“Feel free, nephew.”

“I know you’re always saying that the reason I don’t make a good Left Hand is because I’m too straightforward,” Derek says, “but can’t Corinne or Talia just give Marisela the Bite? Turn her back into a shifter, thus erasing the proof that she had ever been cured?”

Peter blinks. “That _is_ a rather straightforward solution. But by no means a stupid question.”

“Wouldn’t she reject it?” Tom asks. “I mean, if she’d been cured, wouldn’t she have the antibodies or whatever?”

“No, see, she wouldn’t,” Derek says. “It seems like whoever the scientists in Toledo were, they were coming at this from a different angle. After all their first test subjects died, they must have gone back to square one. All the research Stiles and I did after his tangle with Jennifer Blake and the non-cure she injected me with suggests that her plan was never going to work. Because there’s two stages to being turned – first the virus, then the altered DNA. Blake was working with the virus, the antibodies. But it seems like all that does is set off rejection again. These people – they must have been doing gene therapy. They would have been using a virus somewhat like lycanthropy itself – to target and rewrite the relevant parts of the DNA.”

“Like a reverse bite,” Tom says.

Derek nods. “Not long after what happened with Blake, Stiles said he thought that was the only way it would ever truly work. The virus itself is irrelevant. It’s the DNA you have to change. And gene therapy has been successful in some things like hemophilia and combined immunodeficiency. So it’s not outside the bounds of reason to say that they could have used it to ‘cure’ a shifter.”

Peter is nodding along, then says, “I suspect Corinne has tried it, but it’s certainly worth checking into.”  He takes out his phone and taps the screen several times, putting it on speaker. It rings once, and then Aaron picks up. “I presume you’re still with Corinne?” Peter asks, and Aaron confirms that he is. “Will you put me on speaker? I need to ask her something.”

“She’s sleeping,” Aaron says.

“So wake her. It’s no more than she deserves.”

Aaron gives a quiet little snort, and there are a few muffled noises and then a moment of silence. Then Corinne’s voice. “What do you want?”

Tom stiffens a little at this, to hear not just the voice of the woman who had so badly hurt his son, but her less than cooperative attitude. Peter reaches out and rests his hand on Tom’s knee, lightly, possibly not even aware of why he was doing it. “Have you ever tried just giving Marisela the Bite?”

“Yeah. Of course.” Corinne sounds a little surly, but at least she’s answering. “It wouldn’t take. She got the fangs and some of the healing, but it went away after a few days. I tried again on a full moon, and the same thing happened.”

“All right.” Peter hangs up without saying goodbye. “It was a good thought, Derek.”

Tom sighs and leans back against the wall. “Okay. Finding Arya has to be our priority.”

“There’s a way to get to her,” Peter says. “I just haven’t figured out how yet.”

“Well, look,” Derek says, “somehow, there’s a connection between us and Arya Calaveras. We just don’t know what it is. But she knew that we were planning to adopt. How?”

“Talia would have talked about it to the other alphas,” Peter says.

“Okay,” Derek says, “but how did it get past them? Who did they tell? How did it get back to Arya Calaveras? Somehow, if we can trace that piece of information far enough, we can find someone who can get us to Arya. We just have to figure out who it is.”

Peter is nodding again, and he takes out his phone and dials again. Talia picks up a few moments later. “Talia, who did you tell that Tom and I were talking about adopting?”

“Just Satomi, Sebastian, and Douglas,” she says, sounding a little puzzled. “Why?”

“Well, one of them told someone, who told someone, who told someone, et cetera, who told Arya Calaveras.”

There’s a moment of silence, then Talia says, “Let me call you back.”

Peter hangs up. The little lounge sits in silence for a few moments. Tom looks at him and says, “When was the last time you slept?”

“Before . . . all of this,” Peter says vaguely, waving a hand. “Don’t mother hen me. I’m fine.”

“Saying that doesn’t make it so,” Tom says, and Peter doesn’t reply. “Just take a nap for a few hours when you get home later today. Okay?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Peter replies, “but you’re hardly one to talk, given that you haven’t left the hospital since Stiles got here.”

Tom sighs. “Yeah, I know. I need a shower, if nothing else. Tell you what – if you’ll get a few hours of sleep this afternoon after introducing Malia to her sister, I’ll go home tonight so I can shower and sleep in a real bed while you stay with Stiles. Deal?”

“Deal,” Peter says. His phone rings, and he answers it. “So?”

“Satomi didn’t say anything to anybody. Sebastian told his mate but nobody else, and he says he asked his mate but he didn’t say anything to anyone. Douglas, however, mentioned it over a pack dinner. Apparently his granddaughter just came out as a lesbian and was worried that adopted children would seem less legitimate. He’s going to talk to his pack members to find out who said something, and who they said it to.”

“All right. Let me know as soon as you’ve heard something.” Peter hangs up.

Tom is shaking his head a little. “That may or may not get us anywhere. Actually, a pack member – no matter whose pack – is probably the least likely to be the connection.”

Peter’s frowning. “I don’t know who else would have known.”

“Dozens of people, Peter.” Tom rubs the heel of his hand over his head. “Remember the stacks and stacks of paperwork? The doctors, the background checks, the home inspection – being screened for adoption creates a paper trail a mile long. Anywhere in the process, someone could have seen your name or mine on a form and realized what it meant.” He sees Derek’s face, and Peter’s, and adds, “I’m not saying we can’t track down the connection. Just that I don’t think we should start raking Douglas’ pack members over the coals.”

“Fair enough. For the moment, I want to go home and get a thorough accounting of events from Corinne. We’ll see if there’s anything there we can use. Then I’ll introduce Malia to her sister.”

“And then you’ll get some sleep,” Tom tells him firmly.

“Yes, yes, mother hen.” Peter looks pensive for a moment, then says, “Though I suppose you would be a father cock . . .”

Derek chokes on his tea.

“Well, that’s enough conversation for today,” Tom says, standing up. “I’ll go check on Stiles and be grateful he wasn’t awake to hear you say that.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	14. Chapter 14

After some discussion the night before, Talia and Peter had decided to keep Corinne in the property’s shed. None of them want her scent in any of the houses, and they don’t really want her near the children, either. The shed is fine, at least for a few days. They’ve put in some blankets and cushions, and some bottled water. When she needs to use the bathroom, they walk her back to the house. It’s not a long-term solution, but she’ll be weak from the wolfsbane for at least another day or two, so they don’t have to worry about her trying to escape.

Peter knows that Marisela knows about her twin, the same way Malia had. Even if she hadn’t two days ago, Corinne must have explained it before sending her in to take Tom out of commission. So at least he doesn’t have to worry about shocking her too badly. There isn’t really a good way to ease into it, so he simply walks into the shed with Malia. Corinne has made it into a chair, and Marisela is sitting on the floor beside her. Aaron and Jonathan are watching them, but they bow out when Peter shows up, to give him privacy to work.

“Malia,” he says, gesturing, “this is your twin sister, Marisela, and her mother, Corinne.”

Peter has always prided himself on being ready for just about anything. He’s good at predicting people, predicting outcomes, and he generally knows how things are going to go, at least down to a handful of options. So when Malia takes one look at the two people in the shed and screeches at the top of her lungs, launching herself at Corinne, he’s a little startled. Marisela launches to her feet to intercept her, and the two of them go down into a snarling, tangled heap.

“Marisela, stop it!” Corinne says, trying to get to her feet but wincing in pain. Peter wades in and manages to grab the wrist of one girl and the scruff of another, pulling them apart.

“Mal – ”

“She hurt Stiles!” Malia screams, fighting to get free of him. “She hurt Stiles and I’m going to kill her!”

“Don’t you touch my mama!” Marisela shouts back, squirming and twisting in his grip. Peter lets her go and shoves back towards Corinne. She’s a human child; even wounded, the alpha will be able to handle her. He needs all his attention focused on subduing his raging, flailing little coyote. He drops to his knees and pulls her into an embrace, hugging her tightly as she continues to struggle.

“Malia, sweetheart, it’s all right,” he says.

“No!” Malia is still trying to get free. “She hurt Stiles and she hurt Daddy! We should kill her! I’m gonna kill her!”

“She had to!” Marisela shouts. “She was protecting me!”

“I don’t care! You’re not my big brother, I don’t care! I hate you!”

“Malia,” Peter says again. “I know you’re upset, but I need you to calm down, okay? We can’t kill Corinne. She knows things that I need to know.”

Malia settles a little at this, and her eyes flash gold. “Then she should tell you and then I’ll kill her!”

Marisela pulls free of Corinne and jumps onto her sister again, then wails as Malia’s teeth sink deep into her forearm. “No fair biting! No fair!”

“I’ll bite if I want to!” Malia retorts, baring her bloody teeth at Marisela and Corinne.

Peter picks her up wholesale and turns away from the other two so he can be a visual roadblock between them. “Malia,” he says again, more firmly. “I need you to _calm down_. I know you’re angry. I’m angry too.”

“She hurt your mate,” Malia says.

Peter winces, feeling that twist at his gut. “Yes, she did. Clever little coyote. You smelled their old scent in Stiles’ room this morning, hm? You put a few pieces together. I’m proud of you. But little one, there is a time for violence, a time for teeth and claws, and this is not that time. I need you to trust me. If I could tear her limb-from-limb for what she did to Stiles, I would. But we need her, because she can help keep you and your sister safe. Okay?”

Malia scowls, folding her arms over her chest. “Okay,” she mutters.

“I’m going to let you go now. Okay?” Peter asks, and Malia nods. He sits down and pulls her into his lap. “So, as I was saying, this is your twin sister.”

“I hate her,” Malia says, baring her teeth at Marisela.

“I hate you too,” Marisela retorts. “You tried to hurt my mama.”

“Your mama hurt my brother!”

“I told you, she had to!”

“No,” Corinne interrupts, and Marisela turns to her, her jaw sagging slightly. Corinne sounds exhausted. “No, I didn’t. I’m sorry, Malia, for hurting your brother, and for trying to hurt your father. I was scared, and I lashed out at Stiles without thinking things through. What I did to him was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your sorry,” Malia snarls. “I want my brother.”

“If I could give that to you, I would.”

Malia eyes her suspiciously, and Peter sees that there’s no way he’ll be able to leave the two little girls playing in the sandbox together. “Malia, why don’t you go back to the main house? Tyler and Sylvia will be there. You can put on one of Tyler’s videos. Okay?” he says, and Malia nods, sullen but pliant, before snarling at Marisela one more time for good measure and exiting the shed. Peter watches her go to make sure she gets back to the house safely, before beckoning Aaron back inside. “Will you take Marisela over to one of the other houses, put on a movie for her or something, so I can talk to Corinne?”

“Sure,” Aaron says. “Come on, sweetie. I think we have some ice cream.”

“Well . . .” Marisela’s sulk is just as pronounced as Malia’s, but she gives in. “Okay.”

Peter watches them go, as well, and finally shut the door so it’s just him and Corinne, before taking out his phone. “I’m going to record this, if you don’t mind, or actually even if you do mind,” he says, tapping the screen a few times and then setting it down. “Start at the beginning.”

Corinne nods and closes her eyes for a few moments. “When I was a kid, my uncle Hector was my favorite uncle. He would swing into town unannounced, bring us treats from Mexico, stuff we couldn’t get in the US. When I was twelve, he taught me how to shoot a gun. I remember him saying to me that every werewolf should know how to fire a gun, because it was the last thing people would expect. A couple years later, he showed up in the middle of the night. He and my mother got in a big argument about how he couldn’t just show up anymore, that they knew he was working for the cartels and they didn’t want anyone targeting us. He tried to say it wasn’t a big deal, but I didn’t see him again after that.”

Peter nods, letting her get to the point in her own way. It’s not his job to decide what is and is not important.

She’s quiet for a long minute. “Carol, Jessica, and I were practically sisters. I got along better with them than I did my actual sister. Splitting up when Jess went to college and Carol moved up to Oregon – that was hard. I fell in with a pretty bad crowd. There had been an anti-werewolf movement growing in southern Texas for a while. Mostly it was just harassment and graffiti, but after a few kids got arrested and prosecuted, things got ugly. An omega was beaten up behind a bar. Someone threw some Molotov cocktails through a pack’s den windows. That sort of thing. Around that time, there was an election, and the new sheriff was pretty heavily anti-shifter. Thought the laws that were sympathetic to them were bullshit. There was a bunch of cases of police brutality. Eventually, some of the shifters decided to fight fire with fire.

“I’m summarizing here, because this is something that took place over a lot of time. It actually started in our senior year of high school. But I think it was about three years later before it got bad enough to the point where I tried to get in touch with Hector to get some weapons. It took me almost six months to find him. I was actually down in Mexico when things reached a tipping point up here. Someone got a video of a cop chasing down a couple werewolf kids and beating them bloody. He got arrested, there was a whole bunch of internal documentation found about how the sheriff had explicitly directed them to harass werewolves, so he got arrested, too. The group I was in didn’t have an enemy to fight anymore, so they drifted apart.

“I’d gotten arrested twice during all this, and ended up doing a year in jail for some assault charges. It made it hard to get work afterwards. Hell, it’s hard enough for humans with a criminal records – nobody wants to hire a _werewolf_ with a conviction for assault. Hector got me some work – mostly bodyguard or transpo, nothing technically illegal. Then a year later, Jessica disappeared.”

Corinne closes her eyes for a long minute. “I knew – the instant I saw the pictures of the crime scene, I knew who had done it. I had heard about Calaveras from my work with the cartels; I knew the tactics they used and I knew that they had been working with the WLO. I went to Hector for help. He managed to get me to someone who could get me a low-level job in their ranks. It took me four months to get to the point where I managed to set them up to kidnap me and bring me to their facility.”

“You couldn’t have found out where it was?” Peter asks, interrupting for the first time.

“Eventually, maybe. But Calaveras is a very tightly-run ship. They keep their secrets. I would’ve had to be high up in the rankings. It would have taken me years, and I would’ve had to do a lot of terrible things to get there.”

Peter nods. “I see. Go on.”

“I knew that they wouldn’t be able to hold me. In all the information I gave Calaveras on myself, I made it look like I was an omega. So when they drugged me, they only gave me half of what would be needed to keep an alpha down. I pretended I was unconscious after I woke up, until they got me to their facility. And then.” She shrugs. “I’m sure you can guess what happened then.”

“I don’t want to guess. I want facts.”

Corinne’s mouth tightens with annoyance, but she starts talking again. “I got free and went to find out what was going on. At that point I didn’t really know what the WLO was doing with the abducted women, although I had a vague idea. I found the babies, and then I . . .” Her voice falters for the first time. “I found Jessica. And the other women. Shot twice in the back of the head. Executed. I . . . I could only tell it was Jessica because of a birth mark she had on her arm.” She clears her throat and composes herself. “I killed everyone in that facility I came across. I meant to leave people alive so I could prove what the WLO had been doing, but I lost control. When I calmed down, I went through the records to see if I could figure out which child was Jessica’s. That’s when I found out about the fact that they had cured her.”

“How did they know?” Peter asks. “It’s impossible to differentiate a werewolf or were-anything as an infant from a human.”

“They did a DNA analysis,” Corinne says. “It had actually just come back. The babies were a few weeks old. Marisela was the only one they had tried it on. They wanted to start with her since they had Malia as a control. If it worked, they were going to give it to the other babies.”

Peter nods. “So you took the babies . . .”

“Yeah. Drove through the night, dropping them off at hospitals one at a time. Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis. But the twins.” Corinne swallows hard. “I’d never wanted kids. Never pictured myself as a mother. But they were Jessica’s. She was my sister. I knew I couldn’t manage both of them, so I drove to Oregon. Gave Malia to Carol and kept Marisela myself. I told Carol that Marisela existed, but didn’t tell her she had been cured.” She lets out a breath. “Then I took Marisela and went back down south. Went to Los Angeles. Anyone can blend in there. I got a new identity and got one for her, too. I kept an ear out for Calaveras. Arya was furious, of course, had sworn she would find ‘Graciela Fuentes’ and take her revenge.

“We moved around a lot. I took jobs where I could stay with Marisela, wouldn’t have to leave her in daycare. Transportation, mostly, some smuggling. Hector kept me plugged in for a while, but then he died. Natural causes. Drink as much as he did and even a werewolf’s liver will eventually give up the ghost.” She tries to smile. “But a few years later I heard about the children being killed. I called Carol to warn her. Told her to drop everything and get out of town. To head north and get across the border into Canada, told her what town to stop in and to get a hotel room and I’d find her. But they never made it.”

“And you left Malia there.” Peter’s voice is calm but still accusatory.

“Calaveras still had operatives at the scene. If I had gone looking for her, they would have followed me right to her.”

“You left her there for _years_ ,” Peter points out.

Corinne rubs both hands over her face. “I’m not proud of it. Hell, I’m not proud of anything I’ve done over the last ten years, maybe longer. But you have to understand, Marisela and I were surviving by the skin of our teeth. I can’t tell you how many times I got a call in the middle of the night from one of my contacts and I had to drag Marisela out of bed and leave everything behind. And that’s nothing compared to the times when I didn’t get that call, and wound up leaving bodies behind. Calaveras found us over and over again. There were days or sometimes even weeks when we went hungry because I didn’t dare show my face _anywhere_ that people might see it, where it might get back to Calaveras. I risked everything just to warn Carol about the fact that Calaveras might be after her. I didn’t dare take the risk again. I sacrificed Malia to protect Marisela. It was a terrible thing to do, and believe me, I know that someday in the afterlife, Jessica and Carol are going to let me have it. But I didn’t do it out of spite, or even out of indifference. I did it because it was about more than the girls, more than me, more than anyone. It was about everyone. About the world. The second any anti-werewolf group gets their hands on Marisela, the second they can prove that she was cured, we’re _all_ in deep shit. I made the choice I had to make.”

Peter listens to this without speaking, and when she’s done, he nods. “One more question. I found the hotel where you had stayed. Your fingerprints were there, but not Marisela’s. Do you have a place where she’s safe, that we could use while all this is going on?”

“No.” Corinne rubs a hand over her face. “She wears gloves whenever we’re out of wherever we’ve made our den. I’ve tried my hardest to make sure nobody knows she exists.” She looks out the small window of the shed. “It’s been a hard life for her. I’ve done my best, but . . . she deserves better. She deserves to be safe, deserves to have a life, a childhood. I’ve never been able to give that to her. Maybe with your help, I can.”

Peter leans back in his chair, regarding her thoughtfully. “Even if that means you’re no longer a part of her life?”

Corinne looks away. “I meant what I said earlier. What I did to Stiles – I was wrong. I spent so long being afraid, maybe I’ve forgotten how to be anything else. I hurt a member of your pack, and I’ll accept whatever consequences you feel are appropriate.”

“That’s not an answer to my question, Corinne.”

Corinne lets out a breath. “I guess it isn’t. But yes. I want what’s best for her. And if that means I no longer get to be a part of her life . . . so be it.”

“All right, then.” Peter stands up. “Get some rest. You should be back to your normal self by tomorrow. That’s when the real work begins.” He leaves the shed without waiting for her to reply, and heads back to the house. He finds Malia mauling one of her toys and scoops her up into a hug. “How do you feel about a nap, little one?”

“I don’t want one,” she says, scowling.

“Yes, well, I very much _do_ want one, and I’d very much like it if you’d keep me company,” Peter says, carrying her out to the porch. He settles down into her nest of blankets, and she curls up next to him. He closes his eyes, listening to the sound of her heartbeat, letting it lull him into sleep.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Derek remembers the days after the fire, after he got out of the hospital, when he would sit in the forest in his wolf form. Chew on sticks or antlers, and watch life move around him. There was so much more to watch than most humans ever realized. The birds, the bugs, the leaves that rustled in the wind.

The hospital itself is much the same way, with its monitors and its orderlies and nurses bustling back and forth. Then there’s the pack, always coming and going, making sure Tom and Derek are never alone. Derek withdraws into himself, watching them, because it’s easier than watching Stiles. It’s unnerving to see Stiles so motionless, without all the fidgeting and rambling that makes him _Stiles_. He could be watching a mannequin.

Every time one of the nurses has to go into the inner room, Derek has to clutch at the chair to keep himself from bolting after them. The need to touch Stiles is practically overpowering. But he squelches it, every time.

It’s just past lunch – he thinks someone brought him a sandwich but he doesn’t remember who – when Dr. Rana comes in. The other pack members vacate so she can talk to Tom in relative privacy, but when Derek gets up to leave, Tom gestures for him to stay.

“So, his blood work has definitely improved in terms of his kidneys,” Dr. Rana says. “His fever is stable, which isn’t great, but could certainly be worse. I’m a little concerned about his blood sugar.”

Tom rakes a hand back through his hair. “Okay . . .?”

“It’s not unusual to have elevation of blood sugars when someone is on steroids,” Dr. Rana continues, “but it also raises the possibility that his pancreas might have been damaged by the initial rejection.”

“Causing . . . diabetes?” Tom says, obviously guessing.

“Well, in the long-term, maybe,” Dr. Rana says. “But it’s possible that his blood sugars will return to normal after he’s off the immunosuppressants. The concern at the moment is, well . . . normally in this situation we would monitor the blood sugars more frequently. But any increased contact leads to greater risk of infection. So we have to weigh the options carefully.”

“Then what do you recommend?” Tom asks, then waves this aside. “Look, let me be honest with you, doc. I only understand about half of what you say. You bring me stuff like this and then look at me like you’re asking for my approval. But I can’t make a decision here. I can’t ‘weigh the options’ because I barely understand the options. Just . . . whatever you think is best is fine with me.”

Dr. Rana studies him for a moment and then nods. “I think we should pursue a middle ground. Check him more frequently than we were, but still try to limit contact unless things change.”

“Sure. Okay.” Tom manages a nod and then sinks back down into the chair. After Dr. Rana leaves, he lets out a weak chuckle. Derek gives him a questioning look, and Tom says, “I just . . . was thinking to myself, I should ask Stiles about this . . . then remembered he can’t answer me.”

Derek nods a little. “He knows so much more about this than either of us. Any of us.”

“Yeah.” Tom sighs and checks his phone. “Peter’s on his way down. I guess I’ll head home for a while. A deal is a deal. What about you?”

“I’ll stay here tonight,” Derek says, pulling his knees up to his chest. He’s afraid that Tom’s going to argue, but he just gives a nod of acceptance. “Maybe, though . . .” He hesitates, and Tom gives him a questioning look. “Maybe you could send Cora or somebody down with Stiles’ laptop? I could do a little research. Stiles gathered a lot of articles on bite rejection back when he was first researching Gerard’s murder.”

“You know, that’s a good idea,” Tom says. “I mean, we’re pretty much the opposite of knowledgeable on the matter. But even Dr. Rana isn’t really an expert, either. I mean, she’s an immunologist, so God knows she knows a lot more about it than we do. But bite rejection is so rare – the kind of thing you read about in medical school but hardly ever see in the real world. Especially prolonged cases like this.”

Derek nods. “Since packs always make sure to turn a new member the night before the full moon, it’s only rogue attacks that end up with this sort of prolonged suppression.” He rubs both hands over his face. “I mean, it’s not like I’m going to get a medical degree from reading some articles, but I guess any knowledge is better than none. And at least it’ll give me something to do. I hate – hate waiting like this. I feel so helpless.”

“I know,” Tom says. “Believe me, I do. There will be more work to do, to get to Calaveras. But for tonight, why don’t you take it easy. Read some articles, get some sleep.”

“Okay,” Derek says. “I’ll try.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Peter arrives at the hospital with Aaron, who’s there to drive Tom back to the house. He wants to argue, but he knows that he’s barely slept over the last few days, and he’s in no condition to be behind the wheel of the car. Aaron tells Derek that Cora and Isaac are going to come over to the hospital to keep him company after dinner, and he asks Aaron to see if Cora can bring Stiles’ laptop.

“I have to go check on Laura and the kids,” Aaron says, pulling the truck up upside the main house. “Malia’s over at their place right now. Why don’t you get yourself something to drink, sit down for a bit? We’ll see you for dinner in about fifteen minutes.”

“Okay,” Tom says, and heads into the house. He’s going to head up the stairs, but hears somebody cursing, and goes into the kitchen instead. Allison is looking at a plate of meat with a dismayed expression, while Scott is rubbing the back of his head with one hand. “You two kids okay?”

“We’re fine, I just . . .” Allison sounds like she’s close to tears. “Stiles makes this look so _easy_.”

Tom laughs a little at that, unable to help it. “What’s the problem?”

“Everyone’s just been eating junk for the last few days so Scott and I thought we’d make dinner,” Allison says, gesturing. “There was a ham, it _looked_ big enough, but now I’ve got it all off the bone and there’s like only _half_ as much meat as Stiles normally puts out for a main dish, and the rolls still haven’t risen enough for me to put them in the oven and I – ” She hiccups slightly. “I can’t feed a werewolf pack salad.”

“They’ll understand, Allison,” Scott says, squeezing her hand. “It’s a lot. Stiles is a genius, you know.”

Tom shakes his head, still smiling. “You two weren’t really around for Stiles’ early exploits in learning to cook. Trust me, Allison, this is nothing. He once ruined a dish so hard that he buried it in the backyard.”

Scott starts laughing, and after a minute, Allison manages a wan smile. “That sounds like him.”

“Yeah. So. There’s not enough meat, huh? So we need more protein.” Tom looks around, thinking of what Stiles would do. “You said you made a salad? Great. There’s always shredded cheese around here. Let’s add some cheese and maybe some sunflower seeds, if we have any.”

They root around in the pantry and find no seeds, but a bag of almonds. Tom says that will do. While Allison is doing that, Scott starts boiling water to make rice. Stiles buys it in bulk in several varieties, so there’s always plenty around. It won’t be the most adventurous meal they’ve ever had, but it’ll be home-cooked food, and Tom knows that nobody will complain.

They’ve just started to set the table when the back door opens and Laura and Jonathan come in with all the kids. Jonathan is carrying the twins, and Laura has Dominic in a stroller. Malia sees Tom and bolts over to him, throwing her arms around his neck. He gives her a squeeze, a little tighter than he means to. Cora and Isaac arrive a minute later, and then Aaron. Talia is last to arrive, and she’s leading Corinne, who has Marisela by the hand. Malia sees them and starts growling low in her throat.

Tom looks up, and his hands involuntarily tighten on the back of the chair, knuckles turning white. “No,” he chokes out, before he even realizes he’s going to say anything. “I know – there were circumstances, I know we have to allow her to be here, but I can’t – can’t share a table with the woman who did this to my son. Get her – get her out of here.”

Aaron hastily ushers them back out the way they came, and Talia walks over to Tom, squeezing his shoulder. “I wasn’t going to make you let her stay,” she says. “I just figured it was better to have them somewhere we could keep an eye on them.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Tom pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to compose himself.

“You don’t need to be sorry. Come on, sit down. You need to eat something.”

Tom allows himself to be put in a chair, and someone passes him a plate loaded down with food. He eats mechanically, barely tasting it. About ten minutes later, he notices that Malia is just picking at her food. “Are you not hungry, sweetheart?”

Malia shoves a spoonful of rice around and mumbles something he can’t hear. He gives her a questioning look, and she raises her voice, almost too loud. “There’s no Malia-dish.”

“Oh – ” Allison looks stricken. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think – ”

“It won’t be the same if you do it,” Malia says, abandoning her silverware completely and pulling herself into a ball in her chair. “I want Stiles to do it. But he can’t. It’s not fair.”

Tom has to take a deep breath. “Honey, I know you’re upset. We’re all upset. But you still need to eat. Just try, okay?”

Malia looks up, tears streaming down her face. “It’s all my fault.”

“Malia, that’s _not_ true,” Tom says firmly, turning his chair to face her. “None of this is your fault.”

“It is,” she sobs. “Everyone who tries to love me gets hurt. First my mom and dad and now Stiles and then probably you and Papa, too. It’s all my fault.”

Tom scoops her up and carries her out of the room, because she doesn’t need people witnessing this, and frankly he doesn’t trust himself to keep his composure. He goes outside and walks around the yard with her, holding her tightly as she cries into his shoulder. When he judges that she might be in more of a mood to listen, he sits down on the back steps of the porch. “Malia, this is not your fault,” he says quietly. “Yes, bad people have been trying to get to you, and to your sister. But that doesn’t make any of this your fault. It’s theirs. They’re the only ones responsible for their actions.”

“It’s not fair,” Malia says in a small voice.

“No, it isn’t,” Tom agrees.

She’s quiet for a few moments. “Daddy?”

“Mm?”

“Do you wish you hadn’t brought me home?”

Tom’s stomach twists. “No, honey. Of course not.”

“But if you hadn’t . . . then Stiles would be okay.” Malia clutches at him tighter. “If you had never brought me home, none of this would have happened. And Stiles is your real son. You should hate me.”

Tom lets her go and makes her sit next to him so he can look at her. “Malia, I’m going to be honest, okay? If someone had told me before we met you that if Peter and I adopted a little girl, Stiles would be hurt very badly, then I wouldn’t have brought you home. You’re right. Stiles is my son and I love him so much, and I would do almost anything to prevent him from being hurt. But we can’t see the future, sweetheart. We have to make decisions based on what we know in each moment. And what I knew, in that moment, was that you were an amazing little girl who desperately needed a family to love her. So I made that decision to bring you home. It was a good decision, a _right_ decision, and I don’t regret it. And I know that Stiles would say the same thing.”

Malia snuffles and wipes her eyes with both hands. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Okay.” Malia crawls into his lap, and he gives her another hug.

“You know what else I know about my son?” Tom asks, after giving her a few moments to compose herself. “He’ll be very upset if we don’t take care of ourselves while he can’t watch out for us. So let’s go inside and you can have something to eat. Okay?”

Malia nods. Tom stands up, and the two of them head back into the kitchen. Nobody says anything about their absence – although Tom notes with some amusement that someone has taken advantage of it to dish him up second servings of everything. He sits down and eats it without complaint. When they’re done, Laura says she’ll take the kids upstairs and have bath time. Malia glumly allows herself to be shepherded along with the rest when Laura promises that they can watch a movie in bed, a rare treat.

Scott and Allison cooked, so Cora and Isaac say they’ll do the dishes before heading over to the hospital for the night. Tom helps them clear the table and then takes the roasting pan to the sink. “Tom, you don’t need to do that,” Talia says, taking him by the elbow. “The kids can handle the dishes. You need to take a shower and get some sleep.”

“I’m okay a little while longer,” Tom protests, but Talia pulls him out of the room. “Talia, come on, I don’t – ”

“I know, Tom,” Talia says. “I know. The moment you stop moving, you’re going to start thinking. It’s all going to come crashing in on you. Believe me, I _know_. I didn’t sleep for almost two weeks after the fire. Was never off my feet for more than an hour at a time. It was like I thought I could outrun it, somehow. But you can’t. It’ll catch up with you eventually.”

“He’s just – ” Tom chokes out, trying to hold back the tears. “I can’t lose him, Talia. He’s – he’s my world.”

“I know.” Talia embraces him, lets him press his face into her shoulder, holds him tightly. “I know. But God, he’s such a fighter. Don’t count him out yet. Okay?”

Tom lets out a few more sobs, letting Talia hold him, before he manages to regain his composure. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Talia lets him go and offers him a tissue. “Now go get some sleep. We’ll take care of Malia. And don’t sleep down in her room so she’ll feel comfortable if she wants to snuggle with you. Take care of _yourself_ tonight. You need a real bed. Okay?”

“Okay.” Tom nods wearily, too exhausted to argue. He doesn’t even bother to shower, because he’s afraid he’ll pass out on his feet. He’s asleep bare seconds after his head touches the pillow.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized I didn't tag this as angst, and I feel like I probably owe you all an apology for that ... ^_^;;;;

 

“Gather ‘round, children,” Peter says, looking suspiciously chipper as he gestures the teenagers of the pack, Stiles notwithstanding, around the table. “I have some work to do that I need some help with, and your alpha thoughtfully volunteered you – not that I think any of you wouldn’t have offered.”

“What’s up, Uncle P?” Scott asks.

“Corinne has, by now, given me a very thorough overview of the members of Calaveras. I’m going to see if I can find out where they’re staying, do some surveillance, et cetera. That is going to be dangerous and none of you will be involved. I have a different chore for you.” He picks up a banker’s box and sets it on the table with a thud. “We need to find out how Calaveras knew that we were adopting a child. In this box are the phone and financial records for every administrative figure that was involved in the process. The psychologist, the home inspector, the social worker, et cetera.”

“Wow,” Isaac says. “That sounds . . .”

“Illegal,” Cora chirps.

“It is, in fact, very illegal,” Peter says, nodding at his niece. “Don’t ask me where or how I got this information because I will not tell you. And since it is all illegal, I can’t have Tom’s staff help me comb through it. That means I’m recruiting.”

Allison opens the box and pulls out a manila folder. “What are we looking for?”

“The financials will be easier. Just look for any large deposits, particularly cash, or purchases.”

Scott half-raises his hand and says, “Can you define ‘large’? Pretty sure that I would define it differently from you guys.”

Peter nods slightly and says, “I’d say anything over ten thousand dollars, although note down anything just under that mark. Anything over ten has to be declared to the IRS, so bribes are commonly nine thousand, nine hundred, or something of that nature. But you’ll have to use your judgment in some ways, and compare it to the rest of the records to see if it looks out of the ordinary.”

“What about the phone records?” Isaac asks.

“Calls to burner phones, particularly repeated ones that are only a minute or two long.”

Allison’s frowning as she shuffles through the paperwork and looks at the lists of calls. “Does that mean we’re going to have to find out who’s on the other end of all these numbers?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Peter says.

“Can we call Danny?” Scott asks. “I bet he’d be able to help us whip up some computer voodoo to sort them.”

“Feel free,” Peter says.

Cora hesitates, then says, “If what you’re doing is dangerous, do you need backup? We don’t want you doing that sort of thing alone.”

Peter gives her a slight smile and says, “Derek and Tom are going to take turns staying with Stiles and coming with me. I’ll be fine. If a situation looks particularly tricky, I’ll call Aaron, Jonathan, or Laura to back me up as well. Don’t worry, Cora. I know there was a time when reacting rashly was about the best you could hope for from me, but I’m beyond that now. I have no intention of leaving.”

Cora smiles back and gives him a hug, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder before letting him go. Then she accepts a folder from Allison. Scott is already on the phone with Danny. Seeing that they have it in hand, Peter turns and leaves the room.

“What about Talia?” Isaac asks, a little uncertain. “He didn’t mention her.”

“She has to stay here,” Allison says. “She’s the last line of defense for Malia and Marisela.”

“Maybe she could help out more once Corinne is back on her feet,” Isaac says. “I mean, we’re not friends with Corinne, but protecting Marisela is like, her life’s mission.”

“Yeah, but she’s probably going to take off the minute we turn our backs on her,” Allison says. “I mean, she knows damned well that we’re not going to let what she did to Stiles go.”

“Fair enough,” Isaac says, as Cora and Scott both give low growls at being reminded of this. “I guess we can start with the financial stuff and wait for Danny to get here before we start with the phone records?”

“Solid plan,” Cora says, leaning over to plant a kiss on his cheek before grabbing a stack of folders. “Let’s get to work.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Tom glances up as he hears the familiar footsteps in the hall. Derek, immersed in his books, doesn’t notice. Peter comes around with corner with Malia by the hand, and she breaks free from him and throws herself into Tom’s lap. “We brought you lunch,” she says, scowling at him. “You better not have been eating curly fries.”

Tom practically chokes on the laugh. “No, I haven’t eaten a single fry, I promise. But you better not have brought me a salad.”

“It’s leftover Thai food, from last night at the house,” Peter says, setting down a plastic bag with some containers inside. “Enough for both of you. How’s your reading going, Derek?”

“Okay,” Derek says absently, not looking up. He doesn’t seem to have really noticed his uncle’s presence yet.

Peter doesn’t ask how Stiles is. They’ve decided not to talk about his condition in front of Malia if they can avoid it, and Tom has updated him regularly by text. There hasn’t been much change in the past forty-eight hours, and everyone is trying to remain optimistic given this. “So I’m working on finding this connection to Calaveras,” Peter says, sitting down in one of the other chairs as Tom sets into the food. “But we also need to decide what to do once we find them.”

Tom nods a little, and slurps up some noodles. “Are we sure she won’t come to us?”

“By now, Calaveras is certainly aware that we have Marisela in our custody,” Peter says. “When Corinne attacked you here, shots were fired. I assume there was an official report?” he adds, and Tom nods. “So they know, and they’ll extrapolate that we would have been able to follow her. And they won’t risk attacking the den.”

“I wish I could be as confident as you on that score,” Tom says.

“The den’s been attacked twice now. We have formidable security, and Calaveras will be aware of that. Besides, they won’t want to challenge Talia. Arya Calaveras has exhibited an impressive amount of patience. She knows we can’t keep the girls there forever. She’ll wait.”

“Okay.” Tom sighs. “So then we’re going to need to find a way to feed them some false information and draw them in.”

Peter nods, tapping his lips thoughtfully. “Corinne is another problem. She won’t leave Marisela’s side, even if the twins leave the den. Calaveras is clearly willing to attack her – she’s an alpha, but nowhere near as powerful a one as Talia – but they’d be more likely to attack if they don’t have to face her.”

“I guess we should just kill her,” Derek mutters.

Pensively, Peter says, “That’s not a half-bad idea, nephew.”

Tom sighs. “Please don’t make me have this argument.”

“Of course not.” Peter leans over and presses a kiss against Tom’s temple. “No. We don’t need to kill Corinne. It will be easy enough to make Calaveras think she’s dead. All we need is a Jane Doe of approximately the right age and ethnicity.” He pulls out his phone and starts tapping the screen. “Then we can submit a forged autopsy report.”

“We?” Tom asks, amused despite himself.

“Don’t worry, love; I won’t involve you in anything illegal.”

Tom gives him the side-eye and considers asking who on earth Peter is texting and how they’d have access to nearby morgues, but decides against it. Peter does what he has to, to protect the pack, and over the years Tom has come to the conclusion that sometimes he just doesn’t want to know. He shakes his head as Peter stands up, still texting, and heads towards the door. “Are you leaving, then?” he prompts.

Peter stops, and Tom can see him trying to reorient and ground himself. “Ah, yes. I’m sorry.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’ve been a bit . . . scattered today.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go out hunting for corpses?” Tom says, and Peter gives him a look. “Did you sleep last night?”

“I . . .” Peter shakes his head. “I don’t remember. I’m sure I was doing something worthwhile.”

Tom stands up and draws Peter back to the chair. “Come on. Sit down for a bit, close your eyes. There’s no rush to any of this. If Calaveras can be patient, so can we. You’re not in any shape to be off chasing people like them right now.”

“Just because she can be patient doesn’t mean we can afford to waste time – ”

Malia crawls into his lap and growls at him. “Daddy said to stay and rest.”

Peter lets the back of his head thump against the wall. “Snarly little coyote.”

Malia doesn’t argue with this, curling up in Peter’s lap and making herself comfortable. Tom has to hold back a chuckle at this. He thinks about making a comment, possibly about revenge for the lack of curly fries, but then sees that Peter’s eyes are already closed. Derek is a thousand miles back into his book, so Tom decides to leave both of them be.

About half an hour later, Derek makes a ‘huh’ noise, and Tom looks over. “What is it?”

“Nothing really exciting, just . . .” Derek glances up. “Stiles has an article in here about whether or not a second round of bite rejection is really more dangerous.”

Tom frowns. “Everyone seems to agree that it is.”

“Well, the going theory is that it is, because the immune system is already primed to attack, but apparently there are some people who question that. There are some diseases, like mono, where if you’ve had them once you can’t get them again. So why isn’t bite rejection like that?”

“Interesting question,” Tom says, since he certainly has no idea what the answer is. “Why do people think it’s more dangerous, then?”

“The premise of the article is that people are confusing causation with correlation. See, the thing is – remember how we were saying that only rogue attacks usually end in this sort of prolonged suppression? The theory is that _that_ is actually what’s dangerous. The length of time needed to keep the immune system suppressed, which leads to a greater risk of infection. The idea is that since a second rejection more frequently has a prolonged course of treatment, people think that it’s more dangerous, but it actually isn’t.”

Tom thinks all of this over for a minute before shaking his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know if it really matters.”

“It probably doesn’t. I guess I was just . . . it’s the sort of thing Stiles would have found interesting, so . . .”

“Yeah.” Tom rakes a hand through his hair. “Hell, I was never a science guy. I thought Stiles would be a werewolf after the first rejection.”

Derek frowns. “Really?”

“Yeah. The way they described it – if the immune system is what’s reacting to the virus, and they suppressed the immune system, I figured that got it out of the way for lycanthropy to, you know, do its thing. I still don’t even know why it doesn’t.”

“That’s actually a good question,” Derek says. “The articles I’ve been looking at are all about the treatment, so they just accept it as a fact. Maybe I’ll find some other articles about the, the mechanism, and see what they say.”

Tom nods. He looks up as Melissa comes in, dressed in her scrubs. “Hey, are you on shift today?”

“Yeah, I’m down in the ER as usual but I thought I’d come check on him.” Melissa starts washing her hands. She finishes washing up and heads through the plastic door. Tom watches through the glass as she checks Stiles’ pulse and his breathing, then lifts the bandages to look at the wound. Her expression is neutral as she comes out. “His O2 sat’s a little low. Has anyone mentioned that?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. Half the day seems to be a parade of people coming in and out talking to me about medical words I barely understand. What are O2 sats?”

“Oxygen saturation,” Melissa says. “Basically, how much oxygen is in his blood. His is a little low, so they might need to increase his oxygen.”

“Why would he not be getting enough?”

“If he’s breathing too shallowly, not breathing often enough – or if there’s something going on in the lungs that might prevent them from absorbing oxygen, like inflammation or pneumonia.”

“He’s already on antibiotics,” Tom says, unable to keep the strain out of his voice.

“Pneumonia can be viral, or even fungal – which is much more common in immunocompromised patients,” Melissa says. “But his lungs still sound okay, so we may just be able to boost his oxygen a little and that’ll fix the problem. I’ll go talk to whichever doctor is on call today.”

“Okay. Thanks, Melissa.” Tom watches her go. He feels like _he_ can’t breathe. Like there’s fifty pounds of weight on his chest and he’s suffocating.

“Tom?” Peter says quietly, and Tom jerks a little as he realizes that their conversation had woken his husband, and he’s looking at Tom in concern.

“I have to – have to get out of here,” he says. His throat is tight and aching. “Don’t worry, don’t – come find me, I just – need some air and – and to be alone for a few minutes.” He stumbles out of the room and towards the stairs. A minute later, he’s in his car, and he can’t even remember exactly how he got there. He presses his face into his hands in an attempt to stifle the sobs.

It takes a long time for him to calm down, and he doesn’t feel any better afterwards. His head aches and he’s exhausted. He looks over at the hospital and the thought of going back inside makes him cringe. Watching his son, pale and silent in his glass room, hearing more bad news with every nurse that comes in.

He startles when there’s a knock on the car window, and he looks over to see Aaron. With a sigh, he gives a little gesture. Aaron opens the door and slides into the passenger seat. “Peter send you?”

“Actually, no,” Aaron says. “I was dropping off Cora and Isaac and saw you. Thought maybe something had happened, that you might need to talk.”

“Nothing new, not really. Just the same old . . . little bits of bad news. Of him not getting better, maybe getting worse, they don’t know, all we can do is keep an eye on him.” Tom leans his head back and closes his eyes. “Jesus. I don’t know how to deal with this.”

“A day at a time,” Aaron says. “A minute at a time, if you have to. Just . . . breathe and focus on getting through that minute. Then the next.”

Tom wants to get snippy, but then remembers that he’s sitting in the car with someone who had lost two of his children. Aaron knows what he’s talking about. And to be honest, Tom would prefer the truth over platitudes. “If this had happened five years ago, I probably would have just thrown myself off a cliff. But now I have Peter, and Malia, so I know I can’t. I know that even if Stiles doesn’t make it, I’ll have to . . . have to face the rest of my life without him.” He realizes that he’s crying again. “I can’t even comprehend it. The idea of getting up every morning in a world that doesn’t have Stiles in it.”

“I know,” Aaron says. “It takes such a long time to get used to.”

“I remember the way I used to wake up reaching for Claudia . . . or those first few minutes of the day when I’d be confused about why she wasn’t there. And then . . . getting used to it. Which was even worse, somehow. I’d be watching a movie and I’d be laughing, and then suddenly remember. Then I’d feel guilty for having forgotten, even for a second, that she was gone.”

“You just have to . . .” Aaron takes a deep breath, then lets it out. “You have to keep thinking about what they would want. About the fact that Claudia would want you to be happy.”

“Trust me, I know that much. Me and Peter have had several conversations about it.” It strikes Tom suddenly that Aaron is sitting in this car not just as someone who has lost children, but as someone who, like him, is losing one. “Oh, God. Derek . . .”

Aaron nods a little. “God, I love Derek so much. But I can’t ask him to stay, if Stiles dies. Even having seen what happened with Peter, knowing it’s possible to move on and find happiness . . . I just don’t think I could ask him to put himself through that.”

Tom shakes his head, letting the tears slide down his cheeks. “How do you do it? How do you . . . keep getting up every morning?”

“You focus on the people who are left. On your husband, your daughter. The people who need you.” Aaron’s silent for a minute. “I think sometimes . . . I know it’s obnoxious and that a lot of people would disagree, but I try to find meaning in it.”

“Everything happens for a reason?” Tom asks, and shakes his head. “Fuck that.”

“I know. I’d probably be saying fuck that in your shoes, too. But I think about the fire, about my boys, Olivia, everyone lost back then . . . and then I think about Stiles. About how he found us, how he realized who was behind it and brought down the WLO. I wonder if Kate would still be out there, murdering children, if she hadn’t targeted us. I guess you can never know for sure. But I like to think of it that way. That the deaths of my children served some purpose.”

Tom feels his throat clog with frustration again, because that doesn’t help him a God damned bit. He doesn’t want to look at Stiles in that hospital bed and think of a larger purpose. He just wants his son back.

“Sorry,” Aaron says. “I know it’s not what you want to hear. You don’t have to agree with me. I’m just saying, that’s part of how I get through it.”

“Thanks.” Tom pushes a hand through his hair. “This is pretty stupid, huh? He’s not even dead, and I’m sitting here in my car like we’re burying him tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s stupid. You’re trying to prepare yourself for the worst, and God knows that life has made a habit of kicking us in our collective balls. You can steel yourself up for the worst, but still hope for the best. There haven’t been any _major_ complications yet, and that’s a good sign.” Aaron studies him for a minute. “You ready to go back in?”

Tom takes a few deep breaths. “I guess I have to be.”

“You really don’t,” Aaron says.

“If Derek can be in there, I can.” Tom doesn’t wait for Aaron to say anything else. He gets out of the car and heads back into the hospital. Nothing has changed since he had left except that Cora and Isaac are there now. Cora is sitting beside her brother, cuddled against his shoulder, while Isaac sits behind her, stroking her hair.

Peter looks up when Tom comes in, with Aaron behind him. He can clearly tell that Tom has been crying, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, he says, “Another nurse did come by and adjust his oxygen. The numbers seem to be back where they should be. I asked about pneumonia and they said that as long as his lungs sounded clear, they would keep watching him. Apparently it’s too risky to take him out of the room to do an x-ray.”

“Makes sense,” Tom says. He sinks back into his chair, and Malia crawls into his lap. He smoothes down her hair.

“Since you’re back, I’m going to head out,” Peter says, standing up. “I have a friend at the morgue in Ukiah who’s found a body for me. There are going to be some details to see to. Derek, would you like to join me? You’ve been here almost twenty-four hours straight now.”

“Have I?” Derek looks up, somewhat blearily. Then he looks at Stiles. “I guess nothing’s changing here . . .”

“You should go.” Tom manages a wan smile. “I feel like this could be a learning opportunity for you. I mean, it’s not every day you learn how to file a false death certificate. Stiles will definitely want to hear about it when he wakes up.”

At this, Derek can’t help but smile back. “Yeah, that’s true. Okay, Uncle Peter. Let’s roll.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

It turns out that filing a fake death certificate isn’t that exciting. Peter has a friend at the morgue who lets them in to see the body. Peter verifies that it’s about the right age and look to be Corinne. “They know her face, though, don’t they?” Derek says.

“Yes. Which is why the autopsy report is going to include that there’s evidence of cosmetic surgery. They’ve seen her before, but not recently. It would be easy for them to believe that someone like Corinne would have had her face changed to stay off their radar.”

Derek nods. “What about the cause of death?”

“Well, we want Arya to believe that I killed her, but Arya also knows that she’s an alpha and I’m not. So for one thing, the autopsy report has to include evidence of wolfsbane exposure.”

“Inhaled or ingested?” the medical examiner asks.

“Inhaled. Faster acting that way. Then a slash across the throat. Throw in some defensive wounds and call it a homicide.”

Derek is frowning while he thinks about this. “Won’t this mess up the actual case against whoever killed this woman?”

“No, we can avoid that,” the medical examiner says. “I just have to wait a few days and then submit the real autopsy. By then, whoever Peter’s after will have seen the fake one.” She smiles a little at Derek’s concern and says, “Don’t worry. This isn’t my first rodeo. We know how to game the system to make this work.”

“Okay.” Derek lets out a slight sigh. He has a bit of a headache, and although he doesn’t think that’s Peter’s fault, he can’t help but feel annoyed. He can’t remember the last time he slept, or ate, for that matter. Nor does he know how many days it’s been since Stiles was injured. Has it been over a week? How long is it until the full moon?

Once they’re back in the car, he says, “Hey, Uncle Peter, what day is it?”

Peter glances at him. “Tuesday. Eight days down, nine days to go.”

“Almost halfway there,” Derek says, rubbing both hands over his face.

“Mm.” Peter doesn’t really reply, driving in silence. The trip back from Ukiah seems a lot longer than it really is. They’re about halfway there when Peter’s phone rings. He taps his Bluetooth and says, “Hale.”

Whoever is on the other end must be expected, because they don’t identify themselves. “Hey, I have that info you need. Thunderbird Lodge, rooms 215 and 216.”

“Thank you, Braeden. I’ll be in touch.” Peter ends the call and then says, “Ah, that’s where I was last night.”

“Who’s Braeden?”

“She’s a US Marshal. She’s been on the trail of various Calaveras members for some time. Fortunately for me, she’s not averse to working outside the law.”

Derek nods. “So who’s at the Thunderbird Lodge?”

“Without going into details that would probably put you to sleep, Corinne has actually done a great deal of work mapping out the Calaveras organization. Good work, too. She kept tabs on a large number of their members, which of course helped her stay off their radar. She has a lot of phone numbers and financial accounting information. Now, she used that to keep track of their locations so she could avoid them. That is the opposite of what I’m doing. So since you asked, the Thunderbird Lodge is currently hosting four members of Calaveras, who are presumably in town to assist with the search for Corinne.”

“What about Arya?” Derek asks.

“I very much doubt Arya herself is even in Beacon Hills at this point, let alone at a crappy motel,” Peter says. “We’ll have to make her come to us. I’ve had some ideas on how to do that, but none of them will work if we can’t figure out how Calaveras is getting their information. We’re going to need to feed them some false info to lure her in.”

“Makes sense,” Derek says, with another nod. “So . . . where were you last night? Meeting with Braeden?”

“Oh, no. I was meeting with a couple members of Calaveras.”

Derek gives him a sideways glance. “You said you wouldn’t do that sort of thing without taking either myself or Tom.”

Peter lets out a breath. “Yes, well. I lied about that.”

“Peter – ”

“I’m not taking any of you with me when I’m literally murdering people in cold blood.” Peter keeps his gaze fixed on the road. “None of you want to see that.”

Derek’s quiet for a moment before he asks, “Would you take Stiles?”

Peter glances at him, a little surprised. Then he shrugs. “If he wanted to go, yes. But he wouldn’t, and you know it. I’ve come to terms with the fact that Stiles is going to be a very different Left Hand from me. If he wanted to take down Calaveras, he’d do it the right way – the legal way. He would gather evidence and put together a case and get them arrested. He wouldn’t do it this way.”

“So why are you?”

“Oh, well, a few reasons. Partly because I just honestly don’t have the time to build cases against all these people, and I’d prefer to have them taken care of sooner rather than later. Partly because it might draw out Arya. Partly because venting my temper on low level Calaveras thugs keeps me from murdering Corinne in her sleep. But to be honest, it’s probably just a moral deficiency on my part. Killing doesn’t bother me when I feel the person deserves it.”

Derek mulls all of this over for a few moments, thinking about everything that’s happened over the last few years. He knows that Peter has saved their lives repeatedly. Maybe it’s true that he does go too far sometimes. Maybe it’s true that he resorts to violence too quickly. But the fact is that Stiles is lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life, and Derek doesn’t want to see him there ever again. So after a long time to think, he says, “Take me with you tonight.”

Peter gives him another glance as he gets off the highway, heading back into Beacon Hills. “Why?”

“I don’t have the same morals as you. Maybe I don’t have the same ones as Stiles, either. I don’t know if killing these people is the necessary or ‘right’ thing to do. I just know that if I ever need to kill, I want to know that I’m capable of it. I want to know that I’ll be able to do whatever I need to in order to protect my pack and my mate.”

Peter says nothing for a long minute, considering. Then, finally, he says, “All right.”

“Plus, I still don’t want you going alone. If you got hurt or needed help, I need to be there. Tom’s already hurting enough. Don’t make him deal with that.”

“I suppose you’re right about that,” Peter says with a sigh. “All right, nephew. From now on, I’ll bring you with me.”

“Thanks.”

Peter just nods. “I’m heading back to the den, rather than the hospital. We both need to get some sleep before we do this. All right?”

“Yeah.” To be honest, a few hours of sleep sounds good. “Yeah, okay.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is probably my favorite scene with Peter and Derek in the series ^_^

 

It’s just past five thirty when Laura and Jonathan arrive to take the night shift. “I wasn’t expecting you guys for another few hours,” Tom says, blinking at them somewhat blearily.

Laura smiles and says, “Scott and Allison found Stiles’ recipe for tuna casserole, and I remembered how much you like that. Peter’s actually home for dinner today . . . I thought you might like to spend some time with the rest of the pack.”

Tom is torn. On the one hand, he knows that he needs to get out of the hospital for a while. Staying in Stiles’ room like this is driving him stir crazy. He’s started going down to the station for an hour or two each day, to catch up on paperwork and make sure all the cases are properly assigned. But he spends almost every night there, and even when he does sleep, he doesn’t sleep well. The idea of having a shower and his own bed is Heavenly.

At the same time, he can’t shake the feeling that he needs to be here for his son. Things aren’t as stable as he’d like them to be. His fever hasn’t gone away, his oxygen levels are fluctuating. He needs to be there in case something happens - or at least that’s how he feels. The logical part of him knows that his presence really makes no difference. He can’t make informed decisions, would prefer to let the doctors and nurses do their jobs without him getting in the way.

So after a few moments, he says, “Yeah, I . . . that’s nice of you guys, thanks. I’ll head home for the night. Just text me if anything happens.”

“Of course,” Jonathan says, and Tom heads out.

As soon as he walks in through the front door, Malia charges out of another part of the house and latches onto his waist. He gives her a hug that’s probably a little too tight. “We weren’t sure whether or not to expect you,” Talia says, as he walks into the kitchen with Malia balanced on his hip.

“Who could resist the siren call of tuna casserole?” Tom asks, and Peter laughs quietly, leaning in to brush his cheek against Tom’s temple before giving him a kiss. He transfers Malia into her own chair and sits down to eat.

It’s a lively meal. Despite everything going on, a lot of the pack members still have their own lives. Isaac and Scott are talking about lacrosse. Cora is conferring with her father about whether or not Lake Shasta is too far away for a day trip. Tom has a suspicion that the younger members of the pack aren’t aware of exactly how serious Stiles’ condition is. A lot of them seem to have made the assumption that since he survived the initial rejection, he’ll be fine and they just have to wait for the moon to pass so he can be taken off the medication and wake up. Certainly the kids haven’t been told the full situation, except Malia.

Tom is glad he’s there. It’s a bit of normalcy that he hadn’t realized he had been desperately craving. There’s even a Malia dish; Allison had unearthed a bag of marshmallows, and Malia is so fascinated with them that she’s ignoring everything else on the table. Tom has to repeatedly remind her to eat her dinner. Peter is there, a little more distant than he has been lately, but at least he looks like he’s slept sometime in the past day or two, and will reply if someone directly addresses him.

“What have you got planned for tonight?” Tom asks, as they’re clearing the table.

“Derek and I have located some members of Calaveras, so I thought we’d ask them a few questions,” Peter says.

Tom is a little surprised that he’s bringing Derek along for this. He wonders if Peter thinks he’s entirely oblivious to the fact that he’s systematically murdering every member of Calaveras who has set foot in Beacon Hills. They haven’t talked about it, but Tom’s not an idiot. He suspects that most of the bodies haven’t been found, but one or two have - enough that he’s sure of what Peter is doing. He’s still the sheriff, even with his son in the hospital, and he’s been at the station enough to hear about it. He’s pretty sure that most of the deputies have figured it out, too, because they certainly don’t seem particularly enthusiastic about investigating.

He’s about to ask Derek if he’s really okay with this when his phone chimes. He sees a text from Laura, and his stomach drops into his shoes. Most of the werewolves look over, detecting the change in his heart rate, his scent. He opens the text to see, ‘Just wanted to let you know, they’re running some extra tests on Stiles because of his fever. Want to check for infection. Nurse said his lungs sound ‘crackly’.’

Tom has to take a deep breath before he looks up. “Hey, Scott - what does it mean when lungs sound crackly?”

Scott nearly drops the dish he’s carrying to the sink. “That, uh, that’s usually what they said to me before telling me I had pneumonia and putting me in the hospital.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“What was his temperature when you left the hospital?” Scott asks.

“Just over one-oh-three,” Tom says, and Scott winces. “Now, it had been about one-oh-one for several days now but over the course of the day it kept rising. And they were having trouble getting his oxygen levels up. I guess at this point they’re going to run some extra tests.”

“What for?” Talia asks, her voice tight.

“Not sure yet.” Tom texts Laura and asks her. She responds a minute later with, ‘Doctor says bacterial pneumonia is most likely. Something about how the ventilator works. They want to see if they can pinpoint what it is so they can start him on the right antibiotics.’

When Tom relays this to the room, most of them relax. They hear ‘get started on the right medicine’ and think everything is going to be okay. It’s Scott who still looks the most worried, Scott with his extensive experience in hospitals and with lung function, Scott who knows that if they need to pinpoint a specific antibiotic, it means whatever infection this is might be resistant to others. But he doesn’t say anything, instead leaning into Allison for a few moments of comfort.

‘When will the results be in?’ Tom asks, and Laura says the doctor told her it would be about two hours. They’re also checking to make sure the infection hasn’t spread anywhere else.

“I’m going to take a shower and then head back to the hospital,” he says.

Malia whines. “You were supposed to stay home tonight.”

“I’ll read you a bedtime story before I go, okay?” Tom asks, forcing a smile before fleeing the room.

He’s just finishing up in the shower when the bathroom door opens and Peter comes in. “Do you want me to come with you?” he asks.

“You have work to do, or so you said,” Tom replies.

“I won’t be at it until midnight or so.”

Tom doesn’t know how to answer. He doesn’t want to go back to the hospital at all, doesn’t want to hear what the doctors have to say. He doesn’t need to know the name of the infection that’s probably going to kill his son. Whether or not Peter is there with him really won’t make any difference. After a few moments, he takes a deep breath and says, “No, you stay home with Malia. She’s pretty upset. I’ll read her a story before I go, but she probably won’t get to sleep if you don’t stay with her for a while.”

“All right. If you’re sure.”

Tom turns off the water and gets out of the shower, grabbing a towel. “Remember the first time I asked you ‘what do you need’?”

Peter looks a little blank. “No, actually. I was probably pretty upset.”

“You were. And also pretty drunk. So I asked you that and you said that it didn’t matter, that there was nothing in the whole world I could give you that would make you feel better. That’s about how I feel right now.” Tom sits down heavily on the closed toilet, studying his hands. “I just feel so helpless.”

Peter kneels down in front of him, pulling Tom forward so his forehead was resting against the crook of Peter’s neck. “It’s the worst feeling in the world, I know.” He strokes his hand over Tom’s hair, down his back. “Just remember that I’m here. No matter what you need.”

Tom nods, takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Just take care of our daughter. And . . . take care of Calaveras.”

A little smile touches Peter’s face. “A wonderfully versatile phrase, ‘take care of’, isn’t it. I will do both those things. You, try to get some sleep, even if you spend the night in the hospital.”

“I will.”

Tom dries himself off and gets dressed, then goes downstairs. Malia is sulking on the sofa, and says she doesn’t want a story. “You said you were gonna be home but now you’re not and it’s not fair. I wanna come stay with you.”

It’s tempting to just give in. He’s exhausted, and he really doesn’t feel up to the argument. He can already see how it will play out. He’ll say she needs to get some rest in a real bed, and she’ll say that he should, too. Which she would be one hundred percent correct about. And to be honest, given how he was afraid Malia _might_ handle this – thinking that Tom’s constant presence in the hospital meant he didn’t care about her or didn’t want her anymore – she’s really been very good about the whole thing.

Even so, he doesn’t want her there right now. Not with the bad news they’re getting. So he sits down and says, “Sweetie, I’m sorry I can’t be home tonight. I really am. But I’ll come home in the morning and we can make breakfast together. Okay?”

Malia folds her arms over her chest and sulks.

“Okay?” Tom says again, and she nods, snuffling. “Still want the story?”

“Yeah,” Malia says, so he sits down and she curls up in his lap.

An hour later, he’s at the hospital, and there’s a new doctor now, a pulmonologist. He’s talking about ventilator-associated pneumonia and antibiotic resistance, and about how they’re going to start Stiles on a new medication. The infection is isolated in his lungs for now, which is a good sign. Then there’s another doctor, an endocrinologist, who’s talking about starting Stiles on a low dose of insulin because his blood sugars are still high and the infection is going to drive them higher. Tom knows that all this increased monitoring and medication is only going to lead to more risk. This is how it starts, he thinks. One small thing goes wrong and it just cascades from there.

But he nods along to the doctor’s suggestions, trying to remain optimistic despite what’s going on. An hour later, Peter texts him a photograph of Malia, who’s fallen asleep in a cuddle puddle with the other children. He manages a smile, then texts Peter back to say, ‘Be careful tonight.’

A few minutes later, Peter replies, ‘Don’t worry, my love. I’ll be just fine.’

  
~ ~ ~ ~

 

The Thunderbird Lodge is a cheap, tourist-attraction motel on the east side of Beacon Hills. As far as locations for covert murder go, Derek supposes it could be worse. The doors are on the outside. There’s one security camera that monitors the parking lot, and he doubts the night clerk will care that much if it goes dark.

Peter is silent as he scans the parking lot for threats, the two of them sitting in the lot of the Denny’s next door. Then he gets out of the car and opens the trunk. Derek follows him, looking at the cases of equipment. “Where’d you learn how to do all this stuff?”

“Oh, here and there,” Peter says with a smile.

“I’ll bet,” Derek mutters, rolling his eyes. He watches in interest as Peter pulls out two metal canisters, and then a gun. “Do you even know how to use that?”

“Indeed I do,” Peter says. He sees Derek’s skeptical look and says, “I’ve actually had fairly extensive training in the use of human weapons. There are times when using teeth and claws is not . . . advisable. You don’t always want to advertise that you’re a werewolf, you know.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Derek says.

“One of the few things I have in common with Corinne, as it happens,” Peter says, as he loads the gun. “She could teach me a thing or two about explosives, from the look of her resume. I actually got these smoke grenades from her things.” He shakes his head a little, going quiet as he surveys the parking lot again.

“What?” Derek asks, curious about his uncle’s silence.

“I was just thinking, it’s funny the way the world works,” Peter says. “Corinne is smart, talented, vicious – just the sort of person I could have gotten along with, if we’d met under other circumstances. I was wondering how things might have been different if we had met before all this happened – if she’d had someone to turn to, when everything went to shit.”

Derek thinks that over for a minute. “I don’t know. I know she’s not a bad person, but . . . I can’t forgive her for what she’s done.”

“Nor should you. Just my own private reflections, that’s all.” Peter shakes his head a little. “Get behind the driver’s seat of the car. When you hear the gunshots, back up directly through the lot so you’re right under their rooms. Understand?”

“Yeah, got it.” Derek does as he’s told, watching Peter in the rearview mirror. His uncle throws one smoke grenade, then the other. They go through the windows of the two motel rooms. A few seconds pass, and then the doors open, men staggering out of each of them. Derek realizes he doesn’t see Peter anymore. He’s melted into the shadows. But he does hear the gunshots. As instructed, he backs up the car. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Peter jump from the roof of another car up onto the motel’s second floor hallway. There are four bodies on the floor. Derek hears three more gunshots, and then a thud as Peter throws one of the bodies over the balcony and then jumps down next to it. He lifts it easily and puts it in the trunk of the car, then hops into the passenger seat.

“Let’s roll,” Peter says, so Derek starts to drive. “Stick to the speed limit,” Peter adds, with a toothy grin.

“Why is there a man in the trunk?” Derek asks.

“Because I have questions for him, obviously.”

Derek rolls his eyes slightly, and follows Peter’s directions to the warehouse district. Once there, he pulls the car up to a brick building and gets out. Peter says, “Take him up to the second floor. I’m going to move the car a few blocks away.”

“Sure,” Derek says, and gets the man underneath the arms. He groans slightly, and Derek sees blood staining his shirt. He carries him up the stairs and through a large metal door that’s propped open. The room is empty other than a spiral staircase at the back. “What is this place?” he asks Peter, once he gets back.

“A safehouse of mine,” Peter says. “Somewhere that I can go to ground, should I have need. You can use it any time you like, if it ever comes up. There’s a phone and a charger hidden upstairs, along with some other necessities.” He kneels beside the man and quickly examines his wound. Then he pours some water on his face, making him sputter. “Good morning, sunshine,” he says, and the man groans again. “Looks like you’ve probably got a few hours before that wound is going to kill you. Let’s talk.”

The man grabs at Derek’s ankle. “Need . . . ambulance,” he wheezes.

Derek feels his stomach twist, but he backs away, out of the man’s reach. “You didn’t call ambulances for the women you abducted, impregnated, and then murdered,” he snaps. “Why should I call one for you?”

“Wasn’t me . . . I wasn’t . . . involved . . .”

“Nobody cares about your pitiful little lies,” Peter says, and nudges at the bullet wound with his toe. “Tell me where I can find Arya Calaveras.”

“I don’t know, she . . . she never gives up her location . . .”

“Then tell me who among you will know, so I can find them.”

The man is silent. Peter nudges the bullet wound again, and he cries out in pain. “She’s always on the move! Never stays more than one night in the same place. You can’t find her, you’ll never find her. She finds you.”

“That’s ominous,” Peter remarks, sounding more amused than anything else. “Okay, then, let’s talk about something else. How did Arya know that we were adopting a child?”

“How the hell should I know?” the man asks, and Derek pinches the bridge of his nose, wondering how they managed to abduct the most useless person on the face of the planet. Peter, for his part, is unfazed. He steps on the man’s knee, applying just enough pressure to hurt, and the man grunts in pain. “Lots . . . lots of people hate werewolves . . .”

“Yes, you seem to have a thriving business,” Peter says. “Care to be more specific?”

“I don’t know,” the man grits out. “You think the people in charge chat about their confidential sources over cocktails?”

“Fair point,” Peter says. He looks over at Derek and says, “This problem is pervasive. Corinne actually mentioned that Calaveras ran a very tight ship, and only the people very high in the organization received sensitive information. It’s why she decided to get herself abducted rather than try to work her way up and find the location of the facility with regular undercover work.”

“So what do we do?” Derek asks.

“It’s time to go. His friends will be here to pick him up shortly – I let him keep his phone so he could signal for help while he was in the trunk.”

“Um. _Why_?” Derek blurts out.

“Oh, because I have cameras set up all around and in this building, and because I want to get some license plates.” Peter smiles, showing teeth. “You can’t find Arya. She finds you.”

Derek nods. “What about him?”

Peter takes his gun back out and offers the hilt of it to Derek. Derek looks at it and feels his stomach twist. He reaches out to take it, but his hands are trembling. Peter sees this, and withdraws the gun from Derek’s reach. “Go up the spiral staircase. There’s a little ladder and a trapdoor that lead to the roof. That’s the best way out, since Calaveras might have us surrounded by now. From there you can easily jump to the next roof, and the next. I’ll follow you in a moment.”

“I’m sorry,” Derek chokes out.

“You have nothing to apologize for, nephew. Now go.”

Derek nods and heads up the staircase. He’s just flipped open the trapdoor when he hears two gunshots in the room below. But he keeps going, jogging down the length of the roof and leaping to the next. He doesn’t stop until he’s about half a mile away, and then sits down on the roof of a warehouse, letting his feet dangle over the edge.

Peter sits down beside him a few moments later. “Are you all right?”

“No,” Derek says.

Peter nods, accepting that answer. “I’m glad you didn’t kill him, Derek. It’s not who you are.”

Derek shakes his head, keeping his gaze trained on the street below. “Yeah, well, I guess I proved the opposite of what I wanted to prove.”

For a long minute, Peter is quiet. Then he says, “You would never be able to kill an injured, unarmed man in cold blood. Your mistake is thinking that you _need_ to be able to, in order to protect your pack. That’s precisely why the Left Hand exists. You’re a peacekeeper, like your father. Nobody wants to see you go down my road.”

“But I just . . .” Derek’s voice clogs his throat in frustration. “I just want to keep Stiles safe.”

“I know.” Peter kicks his feet back and forth pensively. “All right. I want to tell you something, nephew. It’s something that a very few people know, and probably best not talked about with anybody else. I assume that the day when Stiles was shot is clear in your memory.”

“Very clear,” Derek says, giving him a wary look.

“Do you know what happened to the man who shot him?”

Derek blinks. “Well, I know he was killed. I mean, I know the pack’s reaction to Stiles – and Jonathan – being shot was pretty violent.”

“As it happens, your father killed him.”

“Really?” Derek’s surprised by this, although he doesn’t know why. “How do you know? I mean, did you ask him?”

“No. I didn’t need to. There were three gunmen in the woods that day. Only one of them was in the right position and had the right weaponry to have been the one who shot Stiles and Jonathan. All three of them were killed, and I happen to know who killed who due to the methods used. Talia and I trained together, you know, and we taught Laura everything she knows. But Aaron’s training was different. We use teeth and claws, but your father, being a much larger person than any of us, has a tendency to simply use brute strength. Two of those men had their throats torn out; the third had his neck broken. That is something only your father would have done.”

Derek’s quiet, trying to decide how he feels about this.

“I want you to know that I didn’t specifically go looking for this information. I didn’t particularly care. But I was a little bit out-of-it for the week after the incident, partly due to my own injuries, so later I pulled the files just to make sure that all three of the gunmen _had_ , in fact, been killed. The fact that Aaron killed the man who shot Stiles and Jonathan was something I noted in passing, and honestly it didn’t make much impact on me because I already knew that your father was capable of such a thing.”

“So why are you telling me?” Derek asks.

“Because you misunderstand what a peacekeeper is, Derek. You think it’s about pacifism, about passivity. It’s not. It’s about _heart_.”

Derek glances over at him, feeling tears sting at his eyes. “Meaning?”

“Being the peacekeeper is about love. It’s about loving everyone in the pack so much that you can love them even when they’re wrong, even when they’ve made mistakes. It’s about having the heart and the _will_ to keep the pack together, no matter what happens. To remind people of what being in a pack is, what they’d be giving up if they allowed it to break apart. To be the example of that love, the sort of love they can’t walk away from. Alpha, Left Hand, Denmaker – none of those positions matter without the Peacekeeper. It’s the most important position in the pack, in my opinion. Because without the peacekeeper, there’s no reason to have a pack at all.”

There’s another long silence while Derek considers this, wiping his eyes. “I’m not sure I’m up to that.”

“Oh, you are. You always were and always will be. You ran back into that burning house to save your brothers. You have always loved the most fiercely out of any of us.” Peter reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “And if the day ever comes when you need to kill to protect your pack, it will come as easily to you as breathing. But you couldn’t do it my way, Derek. That’s not a bad thing. I don’t have any regrets over who I am, you know. I don’t lie awake thinking of things I’ve done with regret or remorse. But at the same time, I don’t want you to be like me.”

After a moment, Derek nods. “Okay.”

“Come on. Let’s get you home. I’m going to have some security camera footage to go through.” Peter stands up and extends a hand to Derek, and Derek takes it.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	17. Chapter 17

 

Nothing changes overnight, which Tom doesn’t think is a good thing. Stiles’ fever doesn’t go down, and his oxygen levels don’t come up. The tips of his fingers are getting a bluish tinge, now, and Tom winces every time he looks at them. Derek shows up at dawn, and he goes pale when he sees Stiles, seeing how much worse he looks today than he did the day before. He mumbles something about how he’s going to stay with him, and curls up right by the edge of the glass wall. As much as Tom doesn’t want to admit it, it’s a relief to get out of the hospital for a while so he can go home and make Malia breakfast.

The teenagers are poring over a bunch of papers on the table, and he asks what they’re up to while Malia adds way too much brown sugar to her oatmeal. “Oh, uh, definitely nothing illegal,” Scott blurts out, and Isaac chokes on his apple juice.

Tom laughs despite himself. “Well, I’m glad to hear that, Scott. I’m sure that whatever papers those are came to you through proper channels. Mind if I ask what they are?”

“We’re looking through the records of different people who knew you were adopting,” Cora says, patting Isaac on the back as he tries to clear out his windpipe. “To see if we can find any connection between them and Calaveras.”

“Ah.” Tom doesn’t ask how they got those papers, because that’s certainly not going to get him an answer. He glances over at where Talia is spooning baby food to the twins. “I take it that you didn’t get much of anywhere with the other alphas?”

Talia shakes her head. “Only Douglas told his pack, and none of them said anything to anyone else about it, as far as they remember.”

“Okay. I was pretty sure that was a dead end, anyway.” Tom continues to drink his coffee while Malia eats. He’s already had a bowl of his own. It had been early when he got home, worn out after the long night, and he had gotten Malia up for the day around eight thirty. Peter is still asleep, curled up in the nest of her blankets on the porch. Tom has a powerful desire to lie down with him and sleep for twelve hours.

Instead, he cuts up some fruit for Malia to go with her oatmeal, braids her hair in two pigtails, and takes her outside with the other children for a little while. Aaron is with Derek down at the hospital, and texts him periodically just to let him know that there haven’t been any changes. So he sticks around while the kids run around and climb trees and play in the sandbox. He pulls up weeds from Derek and Stiles’ garden while they do this, seeing that it’s been sorely neglected. Malia abandons the other kids and comes over to help him, saying that Derek had showed her which plants are weeds and which aren’t.

Once that’s done, Malia insists that he come inside so she can show him the books she’s been reading. She’s been learning about dinosaurs and ancient Egypt and music, and she’s made a thorough list of all the things she needs to tell Stiles about once he’s awake. Tom makes them both a sandwich for lunch.

By the time they’ve eaten, Peter is up for the day, but he seems fairly distracted. He presses a kiss into Tom’s hair, says something vague about security footage and how he might be busy for the day, and wanders off. Tom shakes his head a little and lets him go. “I’m going to go down to the hospital for a bit.”

“I wanna come,” Malia says immediately, rocketing to her feet.

Tom hesitates, but he can’t keep her away from Stiles forever, no matter how sick he is. “Okay, go get your shoes.”

Malia sticks her tongue out at him but runs and gets her flip-flops. Tom rubs a hand over his face, realizing that he’s tired down to his bones. Talia sees him, and says, “Maybe one of us should drive you.”

“Yeah,” Tom admits. “That’d be a good idea. Thanks.”

They get to the hospital and he settles into his usual chair and immediately falls asleep. It’s not until several hours later that he jerks awake, with Malia on his lap, to hear Derek saying, “But what does that _mean_?”

Tom rubs both hands over his face and looks around to see that Derek is talking to Dr. Rana. Aaron is gone, but Cora is there now, staying close to her brother in an effort to comfort him. Malia is still curled up on his lap, and she’s growling at the doctor. “Cut that out, you know better,” Tom says. “What’s going on?”

Dr. Rana looks more sober than usual as she says, “Stiles’ blood pressure has been dipping dangerously low. We’ve increased his IV fluids but I think it’s time we put him on vasopressors to get it back up.”

“Which is when I asked what that means,” Derek asks, looking pale and frightened, somehow smaller than usual. “Has the infection reached his heart or something?”

“No. It’s just a continued sign that he’s not getting enough oxygen throughout his body. His organs are starting to have difficulty functioning. We’re also going to give him a blood transfusion. He needs more red blood cells.”

Tom wants to ask why, but he knows he won’t understand the answer, so does it really matter? All he says is, “Okay, yeah, what . . . whatever you think is best, let’s do it.” He hesitates, then hands Malia off to Derek and says, “Can I speak to you privately?”

“Sure,” Dr. Rana says, gesturing him out of the room.

Tom has to take a deep breath before he says, “I know the full moon is still about a week away. I just . . . I have to ask, if he makes it that long . . . how much of this is, is reversible? Will it matter when we get him off the immunosuppressants?”

“I don’t know, Tom,” Dr. Rana says quietly. “His own immune system coming back on line at this point may or may not help. All we can do is try to get him through each day.”

Tom nods. “Thanks.”

Dr. Rana squeezes his hand and then hurries away. Tom goes back into the room and takes Malia back, pulling her onto his lap. Derek paces back and forth a few times before he says, “I have to get out of here for a while. Cora, can – can you drive me home? Peter dropped me off this morning.”

“Sure,” Cora says quietly.

Neither of them ask Tom if he’s going to be okay, since the answer to that question is far too obvious. Instead, Derek says, “Malia, why don’t you come with us, okay? It’s almost dinner time. I’m sure your Papa wants to see you.”

Malia nods and snuffles. “When will you be home, Daddy?”

“Tomorrow morning, to make you breakfast,” he says, and tries to smile. Cora and Derek each take one of her hands, pulling her out of the room.

Minutes trickle by. They turn into hours. Tom watches the nurses and the doctors come and go, watches Stiles slip further and further away from them. He thinks of Stiles getting his teeth into the case and refusing to let go, about how Calaveras deliberately put him in harm’s way. He hopes Peter kills each and every one of them.

Something teases the back of his mind. Something that doesn’t fit, something about the way Malia had been put in their path. The connection with Calaveras. New Beginnings. All the paperwork, all the different people involved, all the people who had known they were adopting. He’s not consciously aware of putting pieces together in his head, and it surprises even himself when he picks up his phone and calls Peter. “Why was Malia adopted by the Sanders family?”

“Hm?” Peter sounds a little puzzled. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I was just thinking about everything that’s happened, and more importantly about the timing of it. Malia was returned to New Beginnings by the Sanders family about a week before we adopted her. I remember Sharon saying that. So that implies that Calaveras only found out about our impending adoption very late in the game. If they had known earlier, they would have approached Sharon earlier, and Malia never would have gone home with the Sanders’. Why risk needing to coerce a couple into giving her up, arranging an accident to intimidate them like the one they had to arrange for Sharon, when they could have just threatened Sharon into making sure nobody else adopted her before we got there?”

There are a few moments of silence before Peter speaks again, with an echo that means he’s now on speaker phone. “It’s an excellent point, Tom. Where are you going with it?”

“All the paperwork we did took time to process. The background checks, the financial stuff – ” Tom waves this aside. “If that was how they had found out, they would have known in February, maybe even earlier. If they didn’t, then they found out some other way.”

While Tom speaks, he can hear Peter shuffling through the paperwork. “Calaveras approached the Sanders family on March twelfth, and Sharon on March fifteenth. So what happened in early March?”

“March is when we got approved,” Tom says. “I’ll always remember that. March seventh. We got the official notice that we had been approved. And then the day after that . . . is when I talked to the crew down at the station. Told everyone that I’d be taking a day off to visit New Beginnings, and a couple weeks off in the near future depending on when we brought somebody home.”

Peter is clearly surprised. “I wouldn’t think any of your staff would have ties to a group like Calaveras.”

“Me neither. But it’s still important to remember that whoever passed the information along might not have realized where it was going to end up. Information, rumor, gossip – those things have a life of their own. The timing is too coincidental to ignore.” Tom takes out his phone. “Let me call everyone in for a meeting. I’ll meet you at the police station.”

An hour later, he’s gotten everyone together. Tom keeps the meeting as low-key and undramatic as possible. Everyone knows that Stiles is in the hospital, and through helping Peter investigate, some of them have put some pieces together. Tom gives them the bare bones of the situation, and says they’re trying to find out how the information might have gotten to Calaveras.

“Now, I know you people,” he says, “and I have the utmost confidence in all of you. But I know that information doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If any of you told _anyone_ that Peter and I were planning to adopt – even if it’s someone you trusted – I need to know. I promise that there will be no repercussions. And if you don’t want to say anything right now, in front of everyone, come see me in my office. Hell, text me, I don’t care. But I need to find this connection between us and Calaveras.”

He dismisses the staff, all of whom are looking uneasy, and settles down in his office. Peter comes with him. “Nobody seemed unduly upset,” he says, frowning slightly. “Concerned, puzzled, yes, but there was no ‘oh shit’ moment for anybody.”

“So if any of them did mention it to somebody, it was somebody they trusted themselves,” Tom says, and sighs. “It might just be a stepping stone.”

“And not even that, if none of them come forward. I – ” Peter breaks off as there’s a knock on the door, and Tom calls for whoever it is to come in.

It’s Parrish, and he’s a little more paler than usual. That surprises Tom, since Parrish would have been about the last person he suspected. “Come on in, Jordan,” he says, and Parrish does, closing the door behind him. “What’s up?”

“I, uh . . . I’m really hoping that I’m wrong about this, but . . .” Parrish clears his throat and sits down in the chair across from Tom’s desk. “So before I moved up here, I worked down in San Francisco. I kept in touch with a lot of my friends down there. Sometimes I go down to the city for the weekend, catch a game, you know . . . that sort of thing. I mentioned you being cleared to adopt to one of them, this guy I’ve known for a few years named Travis Martin. I only told him because it meant I couldn’t make any solid plans for a few weeks – we weren’t sure exactly when you were going to need the time off, you know?”

Tom is nodding, but frowning slightly. “I’d be surprised if it was another police officer who was involved.”

“See, that’s why I didn’t think anything of it, even when this all started happening, but just now, when you were talking about it, it occurred to me – Travis used to work in Santa Rosa.”

Tom mutters a curse underneath his breath, and Peter gives him a questioning look. This makes Tom look somewhat amused, even despite the situation. “Santa Rosa?” he prompts Peter. “They arrested you for Gerard’s murder, got really pissed when I proved a bunch of them were corrupt? A couple of them went to jail and three or four more lost their jobs?”

“Ah,” Peter says, and grimaces. “That is troubling.”

“As far as I know, Travis wasn’t involved in all that, but . . .”

“But he might have known people who were, might still talk to them,” Tom says, nodding. “It’s a pretty solid working theory.”

“I could call him and – ”

“No,” Peter interrupts. “Alerting him is the last thing we want. Here’s what you’re going to do, Jordan. This coming weekend is the fourth of July. I assume it wouldn’t be unusual for you to call him up and say you’re heading to the city for the holiday?”

“No, not at all,” Parrish says. “The fireworks in the bay are way better; I went down there last year, too.”

“Okay. Call up your friend, tell him you’re going to head down there on Friday and have drinks with the fellas, or – ” Peter waves a hand to indicate that normal social interaction was far beyond him. “Whatever you normally say during one of these calls.”

Parrish is trying not to laugh. “Okay. What then?”

“Nothing. In a few days, you’re going to call him and cancel, telling him you’ve been called in to work because the alpha is going out of town and for some reason the kids are going to be spending the night at the police station and you’re on baby-sitting duty. Et cetera, et cetera; I’ll give you more details about the second call when you need them, once I’ve had a chance to discuss them with Tom and Talia. For now, we’ll only worry about the first.”

“Okay. I’ll do that now.” Parrish gets up, clearly relieved that he hasn’t lost his job, and leaves the office.

“That’s good,” Tom says quietly. “If they think Talia’s out of town, no way will they miss the opportunity to try to get a hold of the twins. But what if Travis isn’t the guy?”

“Then we’ll have set a trap for nobody. It doesn’t cost us anything.” Peter stands up. “We’re going to have some details to nail down. We’ll have to talk to Talia and Corinne. But I think that can wait until tomorrow. I don’t want to miss the chance I have to track down the Calaveras members I found last night. We’ve got a few days, so let’s take things one step at a time.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

The next morning seems to take forever to arrive. Peter comes into the hospital at about three AM and finds that Tom is still awake. Stiles looks bad – the kind of bad that Peter privately thinks means the beginning of the end. His fingers and lips are blue; his pulse is high but blood pressure low. He doesn’t blame Tom for not sleeping, and doesn’t try to make him, instead setting up his laptop to play some movies off Netflix.

Around eight, the doctor comes in to give them a quick overview of Stiles’ condition. Nothing has changed, and the fact that the stronger antibiotics aren’t working is clearly troubling her. But she tries to remain optimistic, because at least Stiles isn’t getting _worse_.

Tom is pale and quiet on the way back to the house. Peter insists on stopping to get some donuts and coffee, because he suspects that Tom won’t eat if someone doesn’t put food in front of him. Tom reminds him that _he_ needs to eat as well, so they bring the donuts inside where they can share them with the kids. At least someone ought to enjoy them, Peter thinks.

Once they’ve eaten, he beckons Talia over and they head out to the shed where Corinne is temporarily making her home. Peter sums up the plan, and when he’s finished, Corinne says bluntly, “Arya will never fall for it.”

Tom bristles, but Peter stays calm. “Why not?”

“Because it’s stupid,” Corinne says, and surprisingly, it’s Talia who growls. “The whole premise is that you’d be moving the children to a _less_ safe location, because the alpha was out of town. If the den’s security is really so good, you’d keep them here.”

“A police station is secure – ” Tom starts.

“But it’s not. You know that; you’re _banking_ on it. The point you’re trying to convince Arya of is that the police station is somewhere she can get to the twins, whereas the den isn’t. And if that were true, you wouldn’t bring them there. The whole plan is idiotic.”

Peter looks thoughtful, and he turns to Tom, about to say something, but stopping when he sees the way Tom’s fists are clenched and trembling. His scent is saturated with grief and fear, as it always is these days, but it’s overlaid with rage. “Tom,” he says carefully, and is about to ask if he’s okay when Tom’s temper snaps.

“Shut your fucking mouth, you arrogant bitch!” he shouts, and even Peter is taken aback. He’s never heard Tom use language like that, even at his most upset. “I don’t want to hear a God damned word you have to say, do you fucking understand me? My son is in the hospital _dying_ because of what you did. My son, who has saved the lives of countless shifters, who sustained permanent brain damage taking down the WLO, who has risked his own life again and again to help people! People like you! But were you thinking of that when you attacked him? No, you were only thinking of saving your own ass! Shut your mouth or I will shut it for you!”

Corinne winced a little when he brought up Stiles, but rallies. “Me being wrong about Stiles doesn’t change the fact that this plan isn’t going to work! This is my daughter’s life, too – ”

“Your daughter, who you almost made accomplice to murder! God _damn_ you!” Tom shouts. “What do you think that would have done to her? How do you think she would feel, knowing she helped you kill an innocent person? She’s eight fucking years old, how _dare_ you put her through something like that?”

“Tom,” Talia says, standing up.

Tom ignores her. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think about our plan when _you_ are the reason all of this is happening! What was _your_ plan, Corinne? When you decided to take on an entire cartel by yourself? When you decided to infiltrate a highly secure facility _by yourself_ , rather than going to someone else for help? You knew who had abducted Jessica, you could have reported – ”

“To who?!” Corinne shouts back. “The God damned sheriff of the town where I grew up hired thugs to beat the shit out of shifter children! Where the hell do you think I ever learned to trust in the God damned law?!”

“So you did what instead? Got into their facility and realized you were way in over your head, and then what? You dropped the kids off so they ended up with unsuspecting foster families, getting _all of them_ fucking killed! You left Malia alone and afraid and locked into her coyote form in the forest, but that was okay with you because you and your daughter were safe! You selfish bitch! Then you come here and you, you try to murder my son and now you have the balls to call _us_ the stupid ones because our first draft of a plan has a few flaws! The plan we’re making to _protect your child_ along with ours, because God knows you haven’t exactly done a bang-up job of that!”

Corinne draws back a fist. Peter grabs her by the wrist and yanks it around her back, twisting her off her feet. She ends up on the floor, and although she tries to get back up, Talia pins her down, putting her foot on Corinne’s neck.

“Tom,” Peter says, reaching out to him. Tom pulls away, turning so he doesn’t have to look at them. “It’s okay,” Peter murmurs, as Tom flinches away from him. “It’s okay. It’s all right, let it out.”

Tom allows Peter to embrace him, and the two of them sink to the floor together. Peter cradles Tom against his shoulder as he lets out one shuddering sob after another. He smoothes down Tom’s hair and waits for the worst of it to pass. Finally, when Tom’s gone quiet, he says, “What do you need, Tom?”

“I need my son,” Tom moans into Peter’s shoulder.

“I know, love,” Peter says, stroking his hair. “I know.”

Tom shudders again. He takes a deep breath and finally pulls away. “I can’t work with her.”

“Okay,” Peter says. “That’s fine. I think if you tell Parrish and your staff to do what I tell them, then Talia and I can work this out on our own. You need to get some sleep, okay? I know you haven’t slept in a few days.”

Tom nods. He’s too exhausted to argue. Peter helps him to his feet, and he leaves the little shed without another word.

Peter turns back to Corinne. He’s silent, pensive, for a long moment, before saying, “If you ever lift a hand towards my husband again, I will remove it at the wrist.”

Corinne says nothing.

“Now, your point has merit, even though your presentation could have been better. So let’s examine this plan from a logical point of view and work out the kinks. The police have to be involved somehow, or Parrish has no reason to tell his friend. Perhaps they could be asked to provide extra perimeter security for the den.”

“That would work,” Corinne says, her tone somewhat begrudging, “if you think Parrish could tell his friend that without it seeming weird.”

“Do you think Arya would consider extra security negligible, in the face of me and Talia being out of town?”

Corinne nods.

“Excellent. Let’s hammer out the details. My chief concern is that Arya herself won’t attend the raid. She has no reason to expose herself like that. Which means we will either have to persuade one of her men to take us back to her, or let her think that she’s won.”

“You mean, let them take the twins?” Talia sounds a little alarmed.

“They wouldn’t hurt them. Arya needs them alive.”

“You are _not_ letting them get their hands on my daughter,” Corinne says, her voice shaking.

“It’s the best way to get directly to Arya. As long as she doesn’t have the twins, she’ll deal through intermediaries. But if we put GPS tracking on them, they’ll lead us straight to her.”

“Listen to me – ” Corinne starts.

“No, you listen to me,” Peter replies. “We are going to take care of this. We are going to wipe Arya Calaveras off the face of the planet, and we are going to keep our daughters safe. You forfeited your right to tell me how to handle this when you hurt my mate. The _only_ reason Arya will come out of the shadows is for the twins. Nothing less will get her to show her face, so that is what we are going to use. This is my daughter, too.”

“You’ve had her less than four months. I’ve had Marisela since she was an infant. Don’t try to compare what she is to me, to what Malia is to you. I’ve devoted my entire life to keeping Marisela safe from this woman.”

“I know. It’s made you blind to everything else. You’ve protected Marisela at the expense of countless other people. That is exactly how you wound up in this position.” Peter turns to Talia. “I want to talk to the two girls, without this waste of oxygen present. Will you keep her here?”

“Gladly,” Talia says.

Corinne tries to get to her feet, but Talia won’t let her. “Don’t you dare talk my daughter into doing this – ”

“Don’t worry, Corinne,” Peter says, as he heads for the door. “I’ll take care of your daughter, as if she were my own. I’ll do a better job than you ever did. So shut the hell up.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably give a tissue warning with this chapter, but my hope is that by the end, it will be happy crying. =D

Derek is six miles deep in an immunology textbook when his phone chimes. He glances down at it and sees that it’s a text from Peter, which reads, ‘Are you able to come home for a bit? Need your assistance.’

That makes Derek gives his phone the side-eye, since he notices that Peter’s not telling him what he needs his assistance _with_. But it’s not like being at the hospital is accomplishing anything. Half of what he’s reading only makes him more confused, and the scent and tone of the doctors makes him think it doesn’t matter anymore anyway. Stiles keeps getting worse, no matter what they do, and no textbook on earth is going to save him.

So he heads home, and finds Peter waiting for him on the front steps. His shirt is torn and his hair is messier than usual. “Dare I ask?”

“Well,” Peter says, with some reserve, “I tried to get Malia and Marisela to exist in the same room for two minutes.”

“I see,” Derek says.

“Tom would do better with them, but he . . .” A shadow passes over Peter’s face. “He’s sleeping. I think Aaron might have given him something. Corinne provoked him, and he lost his temper, and . . . he was upset. In any case, I don’t want to disturb him. But you’re good at the delicate sort of touch that I think the twins need.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do, but I may need more than five minutes to do it,” Derek says. “Why do you need the twins to get along?”

“We’ve found our connection,” Peter says. “Tom did, as it happens. One of his officers has a friend he mentioned it to, who apparently holds a grudge against Tom and I for certain things that happened when Gerard Argent died. In any case, we’re setting up the trap for Arya, but the only thing that she’s going to come out for is going to be the twins. We won’t get to her without them.”

“You’re going to use them as bait?” Derek asks, and Peter nods. “Stiles wouldn’t like this.”

“No. But he would see the necessity, I think.”

Derek thinks about that, and nods. “Okay. I’ll see if I can get them to not try to murder each other for a while.” He’s heard about what happened when they were introduced, and doesn’t have a lot of hope. But he can at least try. He goes to find Malia first, as he thinks she’ll be an easier nut to crack. She’s watching TV, so he scoops her up and takes her outside. She looks somewhat suspicious, but allows him to lead her into the forest, a ways from the house. “I hear you got in a fight with your sister earlier.”

Malia immediately bares her teeth. “I hate her.”

“You barely know her,” Derek points out.

“I still hate her.”

Derek sits down in the dirt and pats the space next to him. Malia sits down next to him, sulking. “Why?”

“Stiles is hurt because of her.”

“You know that’s not true, sweetheart. Stiles is hurt because of Corinne, not because of Marisela.”

“Well, Corinne was protecting Marisela.”

“That’s true, but it still doesn’t make it Marisela’s fault. If I hurt somebody, protecting you, would you want to take the blame for it?”

Malia’s lower lip sticks out further, but she admits, “No. But she keeps saying her mother didn’t do anything wrong!”

“I know. And it’s frustrating. It is. But can you try to see it from her point of view? Her mother is all she’s ever had. Imagine if, if after the car accident, when you became a coyote – imagine your mother had survived, and gone with you. And it had been just the two of you for the past four years. Wouldn’t you do anything to protect her?”

“I guess,” Malia says.

“None of this is your sister’s fault, Malia. Not any more than it’s your fault. You don’t have to like her. But you have to not fight with her. Remember after you came here, and you had to learn that you didn’t have to fight all the time? That you had a pack and we would protect you? Marisela might not be a shifter, but she’s still learning that, just like you were. So can you try not to fight with her?”

Malia heaves a sigh. “I’ll try.”

“Good.” Derek presses a kiss against her temple. “How about some cookies?”

“Okay,” Malia says, leaping to her feet in anticipation. “Cookies are better than sisters.”

Derek laughs. “You know what, I think my two sisters would beg to differ,” he says, and Malia sticks her tongue out at him.

They head back to the house, and he inquires about Marisela’s whereabouts. She’s over at Laura and Jonathan’s house, where she’s apparently been spending most of her time as it keeps her away from her sister. Derek walks over and finds her sitting on the sofa, listlessly watching television. He sits down next to her, and she scowls and pulls the remote away from him despite his lack of efforts to take it.

“I’m Derek,” he tells her.

“I don’t care,” Marisela says, still scowling.

Derek almost smiles, because she clearly has no idea exactly how much she and her twin have in common. “Are you hungry?”

“Nuh uh.”

“I have some cookies. They’re store-bought, but they’re pretty good.”

Marisela gives him a sideways look, then says, “What kind?”

“Peanut butter.”

“Okay.” She turns and takes a cookie from him, nibbling at the edge. “It’s not awful.”

“Glad to hear it.” Derek eats one of his own. “Can I ask you a question?”

“No,” Marisela says, glowering at him.

“Okay.” Derek continues to eat his cookie.

Marisela regards him suspiciously. “Okay?”

“Yep. Okay.”

They sit in silence for a few moments. Marisela continues to nibble at her cookie, and then she smiles a little. “You’re weird.”

“I know. You must be sick of watching TV, huh? Do you want to go outside for a bit?”

Marisela is clearly a bit suspicious of this, too, probably because she’s barely been allowed out since they got there. But given that, she’s not about to argue. She finishes her cookie and says, “Can I play in the sandbox? I like the sandbox but the other kids are always playing in it.”

“Sure,” Derek says. He gets up and heads outside. Marisela settles down in the sandbox and starts making a castle. “You know, just because the other kids are playing here doesn’t mean that you can’t, too.”

“They don’t like me,” Marisela says with a shrug, and continues building. Derek gets some leaves and some pebbles that she can add to her castle, and she does so with gusto. He even finds a few Lego-Men that Tyler had probably abandoned. Marisela adds them to the ramparts and then says, “Ooh, I want a bridge over the moat.”

Derek looks around and then finds a flat piece of bark. “Here, try this.”

Marisela puts in place and gives him a hesitant smile. “Does it look good?”

“Yeah, it looks great.”

“Okay.” Marisela goes back to digging the moat. “You can ask me your question if you want.”

“I was just curious about why you don’t like your sister.”

Marisela immediately scowls again. “She’s mean. She wants to hurt my mom.”

“Why?”

Marisela picks up a stick and starts drawing in the sand, just like Malia had done half an hour earlier. “My mom hurt her brother. I guess she shouldn’t have, but she was still just protecting me. It’s not fair that Malia’s so mad.”

“Would you be mad, in her shoes?”

“Yeah,” Marisela mutters.

Derek lets that sit in silence for a few minutes, adding some pebbles to the castle, almost unable to help himself. “I bet you were excited to hear that you were finally going to meet your sister, weren’t you? You’ve probably been really lonely, with just you and your mom for such a long time.”

Marisela folds her arms over her stomach. “Maybe.”

“I think you and Malia can still be friends,” Derek offers. “I don’t even think you need to say you’re sorry. You were defending your mom. She gets that. And she was defending her brother. I think you get that. So there’s no reason you two can’t get along.”

“But they’re going to take my mom away.” Marisela looks up, her eyes filling with tears. “She’s all I have and they’re going to take her away.”

“I know. And I know that I can’t imagine how hard that is for you. I know that even if it’s the right thing to do, that doesn’t make you feel better. But that isn’t Malia’s fault, either. I think if you two could be friends, it might help you feel less lonely.”

Marisela wipes her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. “Maybe.”

“I’m not saying that you have to like her. Or that you’re magically going to be best friends. Just maybe try not to fight with her so much. Okay?”

“I guess I can try.”

“That’s all I’m asking. How about we show her your sandcastle?”

Marisela brightens somewhat at this, apparently looking forward to the opportunity to show off. “Okay,” she says, so Derek texts Peter, asking him to bring Malia outside. They approach a few minutes later, and Malia runs over to inspect the castle. Marisela glares at her, but no more than usual.

“It should have a stable,” Malia finally announces. “I have some toy horses.”

“I don’t like horses,” Marisela replies.

“You’re just saying that. You’ve probably never even met a horse.”

“I have so,” Marisela says. “I’ll build a stable but it has to be for the court dragons.”

“Okay. Dragons are better than horses anyway.” Malia plops down in the sand and they both reach for the shovel at the same time. Malia growls at her, but when Derek gently clears his throat, she lets it go. “I guess you should get the shovel, since it’s your castle.”

Marisela starts digging, and Malia gathers a bunch of sticks to make the ‘court dragons’. After giving them several minutes to work in peace, Peter sits down on the edge of the sandbox. “So, children. I need to talk to you about how we’re going to take down Calaveras. You see, the woman in charge who’s looking for you is only going to come out if they find you. So we’re going to have to let them do that, if we ever want you to be safe.”

The twins look at each other, then at Peter. Marisela says, “That sounds stupid. The whole point is that we don’t want them to find us.”

“That’s true. But I won’t let them keep you. Once I’ve found them, I can make sure they never get to you again.”

Malia plays with her sticks for a few moments and then just says, “Okay.”

Marisela isn’t as easy to persuade. “What if I say no?”

“Then I’ll hide you somewhere safe, and we’ll hope that just finding one twin is enough to get to the person in charge.”

Marisela gives him a sideways look. “What if it isn’t?”

“I’ll improvise.”

A long minute of silence passes while Marisela smoothes down the sand on top of the new building. “If we finally get rid of them, will I be able to go to school? Have friends and, and go to the beach and maybe Disney Land? Mama always promised that if she got rid of them, she’d take me to Disney Land.”

“Yes to all of those things,” Peter replies.

“Then okay.”

“Okay.” Peter smiles at them, runs a hand over Malia’s hair. “We have some things to work out first. I’ll – ” His phone chimes, interrupting him, and only a bare second later, Derek’s does as well. He grabs it to see that it’s a group text, from Laura. It reads only, ‘Stiles not doing well. I think you need to come down here.’ Both Derek and Peter study it for a few moments. Then Peter stands up. “Go ahead, Derek. I’m going to wake Tom. I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

“Thanks,” Derek says in a hoarse whisper, before scrambling to his feet. Things blur in and out as he gets in the Camaro and takes off for the hospital at top speed. He practically burns rubber getting onto the main road, but then wonders what the point is. It’s not like he can do anything at the hospital. He can’t even hold Stiles.

But he can’t stand the thought of not being there, either, so he drives as fast as he can and then rockets up the stairs. Laura is pacing around in the hallway, her posture tight and unhappy. “What’s going on?” Derek demands.

“I’m not sure, Der, it’s just . . . for the past hour, everyone’s looked more and more unhappy. His fever’s gone up, it’s over one-oh-five now. Someone said something about him going into shock. It just . . . doesn’t sound good. They said Dr. Rana was going to look at his test results and then come talk to whoever was here, so . . .”

Derek nods and goes to look at Stiles. The blue tinge in his fingers and lips is worse, and is even touching his cheeks and nose now. There’s sweat visibly beading on his forehead, and his moles stand out in stark contrast to his pale skin. “Jesus,” Derek mutters, trying not to throw up. “Jesus, Laura, I can’t . . .”

“I know.” Laura hugs him tightly. The elevator dings, and Tom and Peter jog out of it. Peter is carrying Malia, and turns slightly as Stiles comes into view as if he can shield her from the sight. Tom looks at his son and then looks away, his face going white underneath his tan.

Derek hears the doctor’s footsteps and heartbeat before Tom does, and squeezes his shoulder to let him know that she’s approaching. His head jerks up, and Derek sees him swallow convulsively. Dr. Rana comes into the room and looks at the gathering with an unreadable expression before she says, “Tom, did you want to speak to me privately?”

“No.” Tom can barely strangle the word out. “They’re family. They’re pack.”

Dr. Rana lets out a breath and then nods. “The infection is progressing. We haven’t been able to control his fever, and the damage has spread to his kidneys. His blood pressure hasn’t responded to our attempts to bring it up, and that – ”

“God, stop,” Tom says. “I’m only understanding half of what you’re saying. I don’t care about the details. Just – just tell me what you mean.”

“There’s nothing else we can do for him at this point,” Dr. Rana says, her tone gentle, but firm. “He hasn’t responded to any of the treatments and he’s going into shock. Even if the full moon were tomorrow and we could stop the immunosuppressants, at this point there’s been too much damage for that to matter. I’m sorry.”

Derek can’t breathe. He can feel his sister pressing closer to him, feel Laura’s hand gripping his arm so tight that it hurts, but it’s dim and far away, like it’s happening to somebody else.

“How long . . .” Tom chokes out, trying to breathe.

“It’s hard to say, but . . . less than twelve hours would be my guess.”

Tom nods a little and turns away. He doesn’t say anything else. Dr. Rana continues to stand there quietly, waiting to see if anybody else has any questions. Derek looks at Stiles in the inner room and he doesn’t know who he’s looking at. It doesn’t look like Stiles anymore, like the brilliant, determined man who was his mate is already gone.

He stands there like he’s in a fog which is broken abruptly when there’s a loud, high-pitched howl. He jerks around to see that it’s Malia, fully shifted and crying at the top of her lungs. Peter is holding her, but reaching out to Tom, who goes to his knees right where he’s standing.

It’s too much. He backs away from all of them. Laura turns to him with a questioning look on her face, and he pulls his arm out of her grip. “Der,” she says, her voice cracking.

“I can’t,” he chokes out, and then he runs. He hears Laura cry out, and then Peter’s voice, rough and quiet, saying to let him go. Peter understands. Peter knows that he can’t sit there and watch Stiles die, that he needs to run, to get as far away from this as he can.

He doesn’t stop running until he’s in the forest, and only stops then because he trips over a root and goes sprawling. Then he lays on the ground, panting for breath. He doesn’t remember shifting, doesn’t know where his clothes wound up. He doesn’t even know how much time has gone by. He understands Peter so much better now, how that sort of grief can consume everything else.

After a while, he gets up and starts walking again. He doesn’t really know where he’s going, but he can’t sit still. He wonders what the others are doing. He thinks of Peter, how Peter stayed alive for years, and can’t imagine how he did it. Wanting revenge was one thing, but it pales in comparison to the despair and pain that feel like they’re eating him alive.

Peter had found love again, had had a child and found happiness. Derek wonders if Stiles would want him to do the same. Even knowing that it’s possible, Derek can’t imagine that it’s worth it. Peter might say differently, might tell him that it is. But Derek doesn’t think there’s any chance he can survive the pain.

Up ahead, he sees a crow sitting at the side of the road. He hadn’t realized he had gotten back to the road, but apparently he had. He trots over to see what the crow is doing, and it caws at him as it takes off, clearly finding his behavior quite rude. He looks down to see a squirrel curled up by the side of the road, injured and shivering.

“Squirrel guy!” Scott says in his memory, and Derek almost wants to laugh. He remembers that day in Stiles’ kitchen like it was yesterday, that first, tentative step to getting Stiles to trust him.

He shifts back without thinking about it and murmurs something soothing at the injured animal before scooping it up. It trembles harder, and he starts jogging down the road. He can’t save Stiles, can’t save himself, but at least he can save this one little squirrel.

Dr. Deaton is just locking up, and he doesn’t bat an eyelash when Derek shows up, naked and soaked from the rain and carrying the injured squirrel. He allows Derek inside and gives him a blanket while he sets the squirrel down. “Just an injured leg. He probably got attacked by a bird and fell from a tree. He’s pretty cold, but I think he’ll be all right.”

Derek nods and says nothing, wrapping the blanket around himself. He watches Deaton work, curled up in the corner. He had spent a lot of time here after the fire. Spending time in the forest, helping the animals, had made him feel like his surviving the fire was okay. That it wasn’t for nothing, that he hadn’t deserved to die for failing to save the others.

He remembers Stiles telling him, “I’m glad you chose me, even after everything” and wonders if Stiles would still say that now. If he hadn’t stumbled into the room where Derek was, what would his life be like now? He’d be at a real college, probably somewhere like Columbia, studying to become a kickass FBI agent or something like that. He wouldn’t be dying in a hospital bed.

Derek knows that this isn’t his fault. Not really. But Stiles has been through _so much_ , all of it trying to protect the pack. Being shot by Kate, abducted by Deucalion, then later Jennifer Blake, and now this? Even Stiles couldn’t say he didn’t regret being part of this pack. He would undoubtedly say it was his own fault, though. His inability to let a mystery go, his innate need to prove himself by solving every problem he stumbled across. To prove that he was really a part of the pack, even though he wasn’t – and now couldn’t be – a werewolf.

Something teases at the back of Derek’s brain. A question he had meant to ask. He clears his throat, and it seems very loud in the silence of Deaton’s office. “Hey, Dr. Deaton – why don’t victims of bite rejection end up werewolves?”

Deaton glances over from where he’s wrapping a bandage around the squirrel’s leg. “Beg pardon?”

“It’s just – something I was wondering about. Rejection is caused by an overreaction of the immune system, so the patients have their immune systems suppressed. Which means that in theory, the bite should take, should alter the DNA. But it doesn’t.”

“Ah,” Deaton says. “I don’t know a lot about it myself, but I think the going theory is that the initial response of the immune system weakens or damages the virus in some way, rendering it unable to alter the DNA.”

“Oh.” Derek thinks that over for a long minute, watching while Deaton puts the squirrel in a cage with a blanket and a heated water bottle. He tries to work through the steps, tries to make his muddled mind think logically. “So . . . why can’t you just bite them again?”

Deaton looks a little startled, and then a little thoughtful. “You mean, while their immune system is still suppressed?”

“Yeah. Shouldn’t that work?”

“It’s an interesting question. I don’t know that anybody has ever asked that before. Typically, when someone is dying from what basically amounts to an allergic reaction, the last thing you want to do is introduce more of the allergen to their system.”

“Yes, but if the allergen is lycanthropy – something that could heal them, could, could heal the damage the reaction had done to their bodies – ” Derek can feel his heart pounding in his chest. “It’s at least _possible_ , isn’t it?”

“Possible, yes,” Deaton says, and that’s all Derek needs to hear. He’s up off the floor and is about to run out the door when Deaton calls after him, “Do you want to borrow some clothes?”

Two minutes later, hastily dressed in some sweatpants and a T-shirt that Deaton keeps at the office in case an animal bleeds or vomits on him, he’s sprinting back to the hospital. The sun is setting now, so it’s been a few hours. He charges up the stairs, too antsy to wait for the elevator, and runs back down the hall. Everyone is still there – in fact, almost everyone in the pack is there. The only exception in terms of adults is Jonathan, who Derek presumes is home with the kids. He barely notices, because he’s looking for his mother. Out of breath, he skids up to her and says, “You need to bite Stiles.”

“I need to _what_?” Talia asks, confused and alarmed.

“Listen – listen,” Derek says, still trying to compose himself. “Rejection – it happens like this. The bite introduces the virus into the system. The immune system overreacts. It damages the virus, so it doesn’t take, and then goes on to attack other parts of the body. So we suppress the immune system. After the full moon, the virus dies, and then the immune system can be brought back online without it reacting again.”

“Yes, Derek, I know all that, but I – ”

“So once the immune system is suppressed,” Derek continues, “there’s no risk of further rejection. It can’t react. But the virus can’t make him a werewolf. But if you, if you bite him again – the virus would be at full strength. It would alter his DNA, make him a werewolf, make him _heal_. All the damage that’s been done by the initial rejection and the infection and everything – all of that would heal.”

Talia is still blinking at him, but Tom has looked up. His face is tear-streaked and weary, but he’s listening.

“It’s an interesting theory,” Aaron says, putting an arm around his wife. “But it’s never been done. We have no idea whether it would work or if it would just . . .”

“But we might as well try, right?” Derek asks desperately, directing this to Tom. “He’s already going to die. What have we got to lose?”

Tom looks at him for a moment, then turns to Melissa. “What do you think?” he asks, his voice hoarse, but steady.

Melissa is frowning slightly. “The logic to it is sound,” she says. “I don’t know that it _would_ work, but I can see how it _could_ work. And to be honest, Tom, he’s right. There’s nothing to lose by giving it a shot beyond . . . six or eight hours of . . . this.” She gestures a little to encompass their vigil over Stiles’ failing body.

Tom takes in a deep breath and then slowly lets it out. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s give it a try.”

Derek practically rips open the sheet of plastic that’s kept him away from his mate. He leans over him, smoothing back his damp hair, wincing at the fever he can feel raging through him. He pulls the blanket back and pulls Stiles’ arm out. Talia walks over, a little hesitantly. “Derek . . . if this doesn’t work, I . . .”

“It won’t be your fault,” Derek says, holding her gaze. “No matter what happens, it’s not your fault.”

Talia gives a little shudder, but then regains her composure, and nods. She leans down as Derek holds Stiles’ arm up, and sinks her fangs into it.

Nothing happens. Derek sets his arm back down and they all stare at it, but beyond a little trickle of crimson, there’s nothing.

“So . . .” Cora says, her voice barely a whisper.

“It takes time,” Talia says, squeezing Derek’s hand hard. “The healing effect of the bite can take an hour or more to kick in. So we won’t know for a little while.”

“Let me wrap that,” Melissa says. She goes into the cabinets and finds gauze and bandages. Derek’s vaguely aware of someone bringing in a chair so he can sit beside Stiles, holding his hand and breathing in his scent. No matter what happens, it can’t hurt for him to be in here now. If Stiles does die, he needs to be there, needs his scent and his touch to be the last thing Stiles knows.

Melissa finishes with Stiles’ arm and then makes several notes to herself of Stiles’ current temperature, blood pressure, heart rate. Then she steps out of the room.

“I’m going to go get us some coffee,” Peter says quietly. “Seems like it might be a long night.”

Derek is barely aware of what’s happening around him as he sits by Stiles. After a little while, he notices that someone has brought in another chair and Tom is sitting next to him. They don’t say anything, but sit in silence that’s more comforting than awkward.

After half an hour, Melissa comes back in. She checks Stiles’ temperature, then his blood pressure. “No change,” she says, and Derek has to hold back a whimper.

Minutes drag by. They drag, and drag, and drag. Nobody wants to talk, and even Derek has to admit that it’s the world’s strangest combination of panic and boredom. He just continues to sit and watch Stiles, the mechanical breathing, the pulse in his throat.

“Huh,” Melissa says at her second check, an hour after the bite, and Derek’s heart leaps into his throat. “Still no change.”

Talia gives a quiet little moan, turning into Aaron’s embrace.

“That’s actually a good thing,” Melissa says. “I mean . . . not to be indelicate, but given the extent of the damage, at this point I would expect him to be deteriorating pretty rapidly. Just the fact that his temperature and BP are stable is a pretty promising sign.”

Derek manages to nod, and even manages a slight smile when Tom squeezes his shoulder. Someone pushes a smoothie into Derek’s hands and tells him to drink it, so he does. He can’t remember the last time he had something to eat.

At some point, someone has told Dr. Rana and the nurses what’s happening, because they’re not coming in anymore. Melissa is left alone to monitor Stiles’ condition. Scott at least moderately cures their boredom by stating that if Stiles can hear what’s going on, they should play some music for him. Cora has the idea to put on some episodes of Adventure Time, one of Stiles’ favorite shows, and gets her phone to produce them.

At ninety minutes, Stiles’ blood pressure has started to improve. It’s minimal, Melissa says, but certainly something they wouldn’t expect if he was still declining.

At two hours, his fever has dropped from 103.9 to 102.1, and his heart rate has come back into the normal range. Fifteen minutes later, it’s only 100.9, and his blood pressure is still low but no longer dangerously low. “Okay,” Melissa says, and lets out a breath. “Okay, I’m not one hundred percent positive, but I’m going to say it worked. I’m going to say that he’s going to be okay.”

Tom nods at her, swallows and tries to speak, but starts crying instead. He bends over his son, sobbing so hard that he can barely breathe. Derek wants to comfort him, but he’s limp from relief; he practically oozes out of his chair. Peter comes in and sits down next to Tom, rubbing the back of his neck and down his spine, letting him cry. Finally, Tom manages to look up and grip Derek’s hand in his, trembling slightly but so strong that it nearly hurts. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Derek. Thank you.”

Derek can only manage a nod in response, but he realizes he’s smiling. He presses a kiss against Stiles’ forehead – warm and sweaty but no longer raging with fever – and goes to hug his mother. She squeezes the air out of him.

“Dude, you’re a genius,” Scott says, in a slightly awed tone. “I mean. Do you realize what this _means_? Obviously they can’t just start testing this on random people, but you’ve literally just revolutionized treatment of bite rejection.”

“It was just . . .” Derek wants to say something about logic, or theory, or maybe even squirrels, but he can’t remember how to make sentences. He wonders if this is how Stiles feels when the aphasia kicks up. He’s sure there are words that would express what he’s feeling, but damned if he knows what they are.

“Hey,” Talia says gently. “Come lie down, okay?”

Derek nods, and Talia steers him over to a corner of the room. He shifts without thinking, and she has to untangle him from Deaton’s old clothes. He curls up on the floor, and a moment later feels a smaller body curling up next to him. He opens one eye to see Malia in her coyote form, nestling into the curve of his body, and closes his eye again. Someone lays a blanket over him, and he’s asleep moments later.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so overwhelmed by the amazing comments you guys leave me ... I love y'all so much. ^_^

 

Tom wakes up with a start when he hears a door somewhere nearby shut. He looks around wildly, trying to gather himself and figure out how much of the past twenty-four hours was a dream. “Stiles,” he chokes out, trying to get to his feet.

“Easy,” Peter says, getting Tom by the shoulder and turning him so he can see Stiles in his hospital bed. “He’s there. He’s fine.”

Tom breathes out slowly as his heart settles in his chest. He looks around to see that he had fallen asleep on Stiles’ side of the glass wall. He doesn’t remember doing so, and feels a little bad for the fact that he was apparently using Peter as a mattress. He thinks it was probably around ten PM, after Dr. Rana had come in and confirmed Melissa’s judgment that the bite seemed to have worked. He rubs a hand over his hair. “Okay. Yeah.” Another deep breath. “Where’s Malia?”

“Over there with Derek. You can’t see her past the bed.” Peter gets his arm around Tom and helps him to his feet so he can see the two of them, still fully shifted, curled up and sound asleep.

“And Stiles . . .” Tom turns towards his son and is frankly stunned at the change. Stiles has color back in his cheeks, and that awful blue tinge to his fingers and lips is gone. The face mask and intubation has been replaced by a nasal cannula. His chest is rising and falling evenly. His lips are cracked and his cheeks are a little hollow with the weight he’s lost, but he looks sick, not dead. “How long was I asleep?”

“About eight hours. It’s just past dawn. I was actually going to wake you soon so we could get you something to eat. I’ll let Derek sleep, though.” Peter’s hand rubs absently at Tom’s spine. “They took him off the ventilator about an hour ago. Since he’s not intubated, they’ve started tapering off the sedatives. He might wake up today, although Melissa said not to worry if he slept another day or two. He still has a lot of healing to do.”

Tom nods a little. He’s about to say something else when his stomach lets out a growl. Peter laughs quietly, rubbing his cheek against Tom’s temple. “How about I go and get us something to eat?”

“Kind of early, isn’t it?”

Peter shrugs. “Are you going to say no to IHOP? Might be your last chance to have bacon without a lecture for a while.”

Tom chokes out a laugh. “Okay. Probably should get enough for the others, too.”

“Agreed. I won’t wake Derek or Malia, but they might wake up when they smell the food. You want those ridiculous cinnamon pancakes?”

“Hell yes. And get Malia the chocolate chip ones.” Tom finally looks around to see that the outside room is empty. “I guess everyone else has gone home?”

“Mm hm. I’m sure they’ll all be in and out later this morning. But I’ll order enough for the people here.” Peter is already on his phone, tapping away. He leaves a few minutes later, after placing their order. By the time he gets to the restaurant, the food will be ready. Tom sinks into the chair next to Stiles’ bed and takes one of Stiles’ hands in his, rubbing his thumb over his knuckles. Stiles stirs, and Tom goes still, not wanting to disturb him. Then Stiles’ eyes flutter slightly. “Dad?” he mumbles.

“Hey, you,” Tom says, trying to keep his voice even. “How are you feeling?”

Stiles doesn’t answer immediately. He blinks several times, slowly, as if reacclimating. Finally, he says, “Is Malia okay?”

Tom smiles slightly even as tears sting at his eyes. “She’s fine, Stiles. Her and her twin sister both. She’s over there, asleep, along with Derek.”

Stiles manages to turn his head slightly so he can see them. His eyes close, and Tom thinks he’s fallen back to sleep. Then he says, “I feel weird.”

“You’ve had a hard time of it,” Tom says, because he doesn’t want to get into ‘you’re a werewolf now’ when Stiles is obviously only partly conscious. “But the important thing is that you’re going to be okay.”

“Mmkay.” Stiles lets out a sigh and squeezes his father’s hand. “Love you.”

“I love you, too.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Derek wakes up to the smell of food, and he’s shoveling it into his mouth before he even comes all the way back to consciousness. Malia sits in his lap, happily plowing through her pancakes. “How’s Stiles doing?” Derek asks, his mouth full of hash browns.

“A lot better,” Tom says, and his smile is worn but genuine. “He actually woke up for a few minutes about half an hour ago.”

“He did?” Derek drops his plate and jolts to his feet, moving over to Stiles’ bed so he can get a look at him. Like Tom, he’s amazed at how much better he looks. He reaches out to smooth down Stiles’ hair, half-hoping that his mate will wake up again. “Did he say anything?”

“He asked if Malia was okay,” Tom says, reaching out to ruffle his daughter’s hair. “Then he said he loved us and fell back to sleep.”

Derek brushes his fingers over Stiles’ lips, and then the hunger drives him back to his plate. He picks up his fork and sets to his scrambled eggs with a will.

Peter, who’s working his way through an omelet, says, “As much as I hate to bring this up, we need to talk about some business. Today is July second.”

“Is that meaningful?” Derek asks.

“Ah, I forgot. You weren’t there when we talked to Parrish. Yes, the plan is going into effect on the fourth. I need Parrish to contact his friend either today or tomorrow, which means we need to get all the details nailed down.” Peter takes a drink of his coffee and explains the basics of the plan to Derek. “So, first things first, we need a reason for Talia to go out of town. I’ve talked to her and she says a meeting of the regional alphas would be the most likely reason.”

“On the fourth of July?” Tom asks, clearly skeptical.

“Normally they wouldn’t, I agree, but if it’s happening on short notice like we’re saying it is, it’s not impossible. It’s a federal holiday, so nobody is working – even most retail stores close early – but it’s not like it’s Christmas. They’d do it if they had to, if there were questions about a rogue alpha being killed on Talia’s territory, for example.”

“Or her Left Hand leaving a trail of bodies a mile wide?” Tom asks dryly.

Peter looks offended. “A mile? Please. The trail I’m leaving is barely a kilometer wide.”

Tom snorts. “The police have found _seven_ bodies, Peter. And I’m sure you’ve killed three times that many.”

“More like four.” Peter plays with his eggs. “Are you angry?”

“Not really,” Tom says. “I knew you were doing it, you know. Okay, it might have been nice if you had dumped their bodies outside the county so it wasn’t my department’s problem, but you were on a time crunch. I get that. At least you didn’t use your teeth and claws. I’ll just chalk it up to gang violence, blame it all on Calaveras, and pretend I didn’t know you were involved.”

Peter leans over and kisses him on the cheek, then says innocently, “Involved in what?”

Tom gives another snort of laughter. “In any case, I can see how the alphas would want to sit down and talk things over. How much surveillance do you think we’re under?”

Peter grimaces slightly. “Enough that I think Talia will actually have to leave town. They might even tail her to her destination. We’ll have to be prepared to do this without her.”

“Do you actually want my guys there?” Tom asks. “I don’t like the idea of them getting hurt.”

“Your guys, no. But we are going to have help. There’s a task force that’s been after Calaveras for some time, and the woman who leads it fortunately doesn’t have a problem with my body trail. She’s going to send some reinforcements.”

Derek is frowning. “I thought we have to let them actually abduct Malia and Marisela, though.”

“Well, yes and no. I do intend to let one of their guys through, but the more of them we can get rid of while they’re at the den, the fewer we have to deal with when we go to pick up the twins and kill Arya.”

“Makes sense,” Derek says, nodding.

“Pass the syrup,” Peter adds.

Derek has just started on his second plate when Dr. Rana comes around the corner. She looks at them, all sitting on the floor with their take-out, and smiles slightly. “Am I interrupting?”

“No, come on in,” Tom says. “Bacon?”

Dr. Rana laughs. “That’s okay, thanks.” She pulls up a chair. “I wanted to talk to you a bit about what’s going to happen now. Obviously, we’re in unfamiliar territory. This has never been done before. Stiles seems to be recovering quite well, but I think we should keep him hospitalized until after the full moon.”

Tom is frowning slightly, but nods. “Yeah, I guess his immune system is still suppressed, isn’t it.”

“Yes. And honestly . . . I have no idea whether or not it needs to be. It’s possible that we could stop the immunosuppressants and he’d been fine. It’s possible that he could go into rejection again but the werewolf healing would prevent it from causing problems. And it’s possible that he’d go into rejection again and the werewolf healing _wouldn’t_ prevent problems.” Dr. Rana taps her pen against her knee. “My opinion is that, since he seems to be doing well on the immunosuppressants, we should continue them.”

“I agree,” Derek says. “That seems like a pretty reasonable precaution.”

“I don’t think he needs to be kept in isolation, though,” Dr. Rana says. “He seems to be doing fine without it. Basic precautions – hand-washing, limited contact, et cetera – should be enough.”

“Okay,” Tom says.

“We’ll continue the IV fluids for now. Once he’s regained consciousness, we’ll be better able to assess what he’s going to need.” Dr. Rana stands up. “Let me know if you have any questions.”

“Thanks,” Tom says, and Dr. Rana smiles as she leaves the room.

Derek finishes eating and leans back with a semi-content sigh. He frowns as something occurs to him. “Yesterday, when everyone came to the hospital, who was watching Corinne?”

“Hm? Oh,” Peter says, “I’m afraid I had to leave her on the honor system.”

Tom stops with a forkful of potatoes halfway through his mouth. “Do we even know that she isn’t long gone by now?”

“Yes, I had Talia check on her when she got home. But I knew she wouldn’t leave. Before I woke you, I went to talk to her. I let her know that we were all going to be at the hospital to witness Stiles’ final moments, and that if she took that opportunity to leave, I would hunt her down to the ends of the earth and torture her to death.” Unperturbed by this statement, Peter picks up his cup of coffee and takes a long swallow. “She would’ve had to be insane to try it.”

Derek gives a little snort, then adds, “Wonder if anyone’s told her that Stiles is going to make it.”

“That I don’t know. Talia might have mentioned it. Or she might have decided to leave her stewing in her guilt and fear. I suspect the latter. Talia has been having more difficulty than she’s let on, allowing Corinne to live at all, let alone stay at our den, after she attacked Stiles.”

“I guess that must go pretty hard against her instincts,” Tom says, nodding.

“Yes. And she is very protective of Stiles, as I’m sure you know.” Peter finishes his cup of coffee. “I have things to do. I assume you two will be here most of the day.”

“If you need help, I can come with you,” Tom says.

“Are you sure? I won’t lie; it would be helpful to have you along, but I understand if you’d rather stay with Stiles.”

Tom manages the first smile in what seems like a month. “Stiles is going to be okay. I got the chance to talk to him, even if it was only for a minute. I’ll come back when he wakes up, but to be honest, I feel like I’ve spent long enough watching him sleep. What I really want right now is to go home, plot how to destroy Arya Calaveras, and then take a long, hot shower. And for you to take it with me.”

Derek snorts again and glances over at Stiles, because he figures if anything’s going to make him wake up, the one-two punch of his father eating bacon and talking about his sex life will be it. But Stiles snoozes on, undisturbed.

“Does it have to be in that order?” Peter asks, arching an eyebrow. “Plotting might take a while. We should probably take the shower first.”

“I bow to your superior expertise,” Tom says, getting to his feet. To Derek, he adds, “Text me if you need me.”

“I’ll try not to need you,” Derek says, still amused.

“How about you, little one?” Peter asks. “Do you want to stay here with Stiles, or come home with us?”

“If I come home with you, do I have to take a bath?” Malia asks, somewhat suspiciously. “Since you and Daddy are going to take a shower?”

It takes effort for all three men not to start laughing, and Peter says very seriously, “No, I don’t think you need a bath right now. You can play with your cousins while we get cleaned up, and then you can help us with our work.”

“Okay. I’ll come home then,” Malia says, bouncing to her feet.

Once they’re gone, Derek picks up the discarded take-out containers and settles in the chair next to Stiles’ bed. It’s such a relief to be able to hold his hand and occasionally reach out to smooth down his hair that he ends up crying. The events of the past week are catching up to him, and for a little while, he just clutches at Stiles’ hand and cries quietly into a pillow. Stiles is going to be okay. He can finally let out all the fear that’s been clogging up his throat, and a flood of tears comes with it. Gradually, he cries himself out.

It’s been just over an hour, and he’s texting with Cora about how half the pack is going to be descending on the hospital once they’ve had breakfast, when Stiles mumbles something under his breath. Derek puts his phone aside and reaches out to caress Stiles’ cheek. At this, Stiles’ eyes open. He looks a little confused at first, regaining his bearings, and then he gets a sleepy little smile and says, “Hey, beautiful.”

Derek flushes pink despite himself. “Hey, yourself,” he says. “How are you feeling?”

“Good? I think?” Stiles tries to sit up, then groans, and Derek has to ease him back down. “How did I – ”

Down the hall, there’s a clatter at someone drops something. Stiles shoots upwards in bed at the sound, startled, and half-shifts. “Hey, easy, easy,” Derek says.

Stiles blinks at him, then blinks at his hands, where the claws are coming out of the tips of his fingers. For possibly the first time in his life, he’s momentarily speechless. But he compensates for it a moment later by blurting out, “What the _fuck_ , Derek, why do I have claws, what the hell is going on, am I a werewolf? I can’t be a werewolf, I rejected the bite, holy hell on wheels and fuck me sideways through a rolling donut – ”

Derek has to choke back a laugh. “It’s okay, calm down,” he says. “There will be no donuts involved in our sex life.”

“Okay, great, but – ”

“You’re a werewolf,” Derek interrupts. “It’s a long story. Are you up to hearing it?”

“Yeah, I’m all ears,” Stiles says, then feels the sides of his head. “Holy _shit_ am I all ears. Feel these ears! Derek, feel my ears.”

Still trying not to laugh, Derek reaches out and runs his fingers along Stiles’ elongated, pointy ears. “Like that?”

Stiles shivers. “That feels . . . unexpectedly good. Okay.”

“Still want to hear the story?” Derek says.

“Well, I don’t think we can have sex in the hospital, where . . . I apparently am, so, yeah. Let’s hear it.”

“You’ve been sick. Very sick.” Derek has to take a breath and let it out slowly, because even knowing that Stiles is going to be okay, the horror of almost losing him is still fresh. “I mean. You know how dangerous rejection is. You got an infection, it spread to your lungs and your kidneys, and . . . they said there was nothing else they could do, and the full moon is still a week away. But I had been studying bite rejection while you were sick.” He goes on to explain the theory he had come up with, and what had happened. “That was about twelve hours ago now. You’re still recovering in a lot of ways, but you’re about five times better than you were last night.”

“Damn,” Stiles says, with his jaw slightly open. “You’re a genius, Der – I never even thought of that, I just kind of accepted it as fact that you couldn’t be bitten again.”

Derek shrugs. “It just jumped into my head. I don’t know why.” He glances up, a little shyly. “Are you . . . okay with it? I know you never really wanted to be a werewolf.”

“Well, I sure as hell never wanted to be dead,” Stiles says, and lets out a breath. “It’ll take time to adjust, probably. But I’ll get used to it. God knows I’ve dealt with worse.” Then he smiles, reaching out to run a hand through Derek’s hair. “I can go running with you now, huh? For real. I’ll actually be able to keep up with you. That’s going to be awesome.”

“Yeah,” Derek says, and leans in for a kiss. Stiles returns it with interest. “And I never have to worry about you going into rejection again, and I sure as hell can’t argue with that.”

“Me neither,” Stiles says. “I might not have been awake for it but I’m pretty sure it sucked like a . . .” He frowns. “A . . . vacuum in space.”

“Black hole,” Derek says, and presses a kiss against his temple. “I guess that didn’t change.”

Stiles shrugs. “I remember when I was first learning about it, and everyone was pretty sure it wouldn’t. The Bite heals wounds, not scars.” He nestles his face into Derek’s shoulder, then moans. “Oh, God, you smell _so good_. How is it the same but like a hundred times more so?”

“I don’t know,” Derek says, and laughs quietly. “And don’t moan like that. We’re still in the hospital.”

“Then stop smelling so good,” Stiles tells him, and Derek arches a judgmental eyebrow. Stiles gives a laugh that turns into a yawn. “Wow. I should not be so tired.”

“You have a lot of healing to do,” Derek says. “Lie down.”

“I have a lot of questions, still,” Stiles protests, although he does as he’s told. “Like . . . what happened with Corinne, and Calaveras, and everything.”

“It’s a work in progress.” Derek sees Stiles giving him puppy eyes, and groans. “Okay. Bullet points. Corinne is being held captive at the den because we all hate her guts for hurting you even though she did it to protect her daughter. Marisela is so much like Malia that it’s hilarious and scary at the same time. Peter is cheerfully murdering everyone from Calaveras who sets foot in Beacon Hills, and we’re setting up a trap for Arya in the next couple days.” He gives him another kiss. “Is that enough to go on for now?”

Stiles yawns again. “Yeah . . . okay.”

“Get some sleep. The others will be here soon, and I’ll be right here.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, and closes his eyes.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

It turns into a fairly lively day, as all the pack comes in and out to check on Stiles and wait impatiently to wake up so they can say hi. He wakes up periodically, for a few minutes at a time. Derek tells the pack that Dr. Rana had recommended limited contact, which makes most of them grumpy. He knows how they feel, so he makes each of them thoroughly scrub and then come in long enough to squeeze Stiles’ hand and leave a little bit of their scent on him. That makes him feel better, too, as Stiles gradually takes on the pack’s scent again.

The only other person that stays in the interior room with Stiles is Talia. When she arrives just after the rest of the pack, Stiles won’t let go of her. “This is weird,” he says, curling up in her embrace, although still clinging to Derek’s wrist with one hand.

“Alpha,” Talia says, slightly amused. She rubs her cheek against his hair.

“Crap, that’s right! You’re my alpha now!” Stiles blinks at her, and Derek snorts, trying not to laugh. “Does this mean I have to follow your orders?”

“Are you capable?” Talia asks, and there’s more giggling from the pack.

“Well, I suppose I’m not _less_ likely to do what you tell me,” Stiles says.

Talia pulls him into a tight hug, and Stiles nestles into her embrace. “I’ll try not to tell you what to do too often.”

“Tell him he has to stay in here,” Derek says. “He’s been bitching about it for the last hour.”

“I’m just saying, I feel fine. Look how fine I am,” Stiles says. “I could be doing jumping jacks right now. Give me another twenty-four hours and I’ll be as good as new.”

“But you’re still on immunosuppressants,” Derek reminds him. “We don’t know what would happen if you stopped them. You could get sick again. I don’t care how fine you feel. We came too close to losing you to take any risks now.”

Stiles sighs a little. “Yeah, that’s fair,” he says, squeezing Derek’s hand. “But you’re personally responsible for keeping me entertained.”

Derek smiles a little and says, “I had Cora pick up your laptop. You’ll have all the Netflix you can stand.”

At around two o’clock, Peter, Tom, and Malia come back to the hospital. Malia immediately ignores everything people are telling her about ‘common sense precautions’ and climbs onto Stiles’ bed so she can sit in his lap. Stiles gives her a big hug and says he wants to hear all about what’s been happening. He sulks when they won’t let him out of bed yet, but is mollified when he finds out that Peter snuck him in some coffee.

“Peter, really?” Tom says, as Stiles sets to the double-shot latte with a will, and Peter shrugs.

“When do I get food?” Stiles asks.

“Since you’re awake and seem to be functioning okay, probably this evening,” Tom says. He’s perched on the edge of Stiles’ bed, where he can hold Stiles’ hand and smooth down Malia’s hair.

Malia is chattering away about the book she read about dinosaurs and how she wants to learn how to ride horses now because her twin doesn’t like horses so that’s something she’ll never learn to do. Marisela can wear sneakers, though, so Malia has decided she’s going to have to put up with sneakers because she obviously can’t allow her twin to be better at anything than her. Stiles listens to all of this with a smile, despite how much he’d rather be hearing about what’s happening with Calaveras. After a little while, his eyelids begin to droop, and he falls back to sleep.

“All right, little one, let’s get you home,” Peter says, once Stiles is asleep. “We still have things to do. Daddy can stay here with Stiles.”

“Okaaay,” Malia says, and gives Tom and Derek a hug before departing. The rest of the pack decides to leave as well, so Stiles can get some sleep.

Tom sits in silence for a few minutes, watching Stiles. Derek settles down next to the bed and twines his fingers through Stiles’, reaching out to absently stroke his hair. “It’s just . . . hard to believe how good he looks,” Tom eventually says, wiping his eyes.

“I know,” Derek says, smiling a little. “I hope the kitchen is prepared. Once he starts eating, he’s not gonna stop for a few hours.”

“I bet,” Tom says, with a quiet laugh. “He looks like he’s lost at least ten pounds. Maybe more.”

Derek nods a little. “How did things go back at the den? Is everything getting put together okay?”

“Yeah, for now. Talia’s talked to her people about the meeting she needs to pretend she’s going to. Parrish texted his friend and there didn’t seem to be any red flags. I want to talk to Peter a little more about how we’re going to handle it when Calaveras’ people show up. I want to make sure everyone is safe.”

“Yeah,” Derek says, watching Stiles sleep.

“I mean, to be honest,” Tom adds with a laugh, “it’s taking pretty much all my self-control not to whisk my son off to a deserted island somewhere, where I know that nobody will be able to get to him ever again.”

“I feel that,” Derek says. “I’d be right there with you. Build a little house, install a wi-fi tower. Get all our groceries delivered.”

“Stiles would go nuts within a week.”

“If he lasted that long.”

They both laugh quietly. Tom says, “How did he take being a werewolf? Did he seem okay with it?”

“Yeah. Surprised, but mainly because he assumed it would never happen. But, you know, better werewolf than dead.”

Tom nods. “I noticed he’s still having trouble with words. I guess Talia was right about that.”

“Stiles noticed, too. But he seemed okay with it.” Derek huffs out a laugh. “You should have seen how indignant he got when I told him the nurse gave us his clue as ‘two girls from the same room’. I reminded him that she was probably a little preoccupied with trying to save his life.”

 “Sounds like Stiles,” Tom says, shaking his head.

“Yeah,” Derek says, and glances up as one of the nurses comes in.

“Good news,” she says, smiling broadly. “Stiles has been cleared for oral solids. Now, we probably want to start him on something simple, but I figured I’d come ask you what he might want.”

“Pastrami on rye,” both men say in unison.

The nurse laughs slightly and says, “Too much fat. _Simple_. Think cottage cheese, applesauce, maybe some plain toast.”

“He’ll love you forever, I’m sure,” Tom says dryly, but then smiles a little. “Actually. When he was little, whenever he was sick, all he wanted was peanut-butter crackers and apple slices. And if we didn’t peel the apple first, he wouldn’t eat it. Which I won’t make you do. He grew out of that after . . . well, after Claudia died, actually. He wanted to be all grown up after that.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, Sheriff,” the nurse says, “I’ll bring him up some peanut butter crackers and an apple, and you can decide whether or not you want to peel it.”

“Sounds good. Thanks.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit for the line about the Left Wrist goes to Mynuet. ^_^

 

It takes effort, but after he’s eaten dinner, Stiles manages to convince his father to go home. “You’ve probably been living in this room, I know you,” he says. “I may be stuck here, but you’re not, so go home and get some sleep.”

“I don’t see you pestering Derek to leave,” Tom says.

“That’s because Derek’s my cuddlebuddy,” Stiles says. “He has to stay here so I can snuggle him. Vigorously and continuously.”

Tom arches an eyebrow, then says, “Just remember, you’re still wearing a heart monitor. So don’t do anything _too_ vigorous.”

Stiles sticks his tongue out at his father’s retreating back. Once they’re alone, he says, “Okay, so clearly we’re going to have to find a way for both of us to fit on this bed.”

“The words ‘common sense precautions’ really mean nothing to you, don’t they,” Derek says, amused despite himself. “When we’re ready to actually sleep, I can shift and lie down at the end of the bed.”

“Fine, but only if you’re close enough for me to hold your paw.” Stiles looks down at his own hands, trying to force the claws in and out. He’s still not very good at it. “Crap.”

“It takes practice,” Derek says. “Stop pushing yourself. You’re tired, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I am,” Stiles says with a sigh. “It sucks.” He flops back onto the bed and says, “Okay, now, tell me everything. I’ve gotten bits and pieces of it all day, but half the time everyone was talking over each other and the other half it was out of order. Tell me everything I’ve missed. Every single, solitary detail.”

Derek nods a little and starts at the beginning. Going with Peter to San Francisco, talking to Sharon at New Beginnings. Pinning down Estrada and getting his real identity. (“I can’t _believe_ I didn’t realize he was working for Calaveras,” Stiles moans.) Talking to Arya for the first time. Corinne’s attack at the hospital and Peter finding her afterwards. All the research they had been doing to find the members of Calaveras in town. The connection to Santa Rosa.

“Damn,” Stiles says, when Derek finishes. “All that in, what, two weeks?”

“A little less,” Derek says. “Eleven days.”

“Jesus.” Stiles fiddles with the edge of his blankets, and Derek reaches out to take his hand, rubbing his thumb over Stiles’ knuckles. “So Peter’s going to track down Arya and kill her. What . . . what about Corinne?”

Derek feels the tension in Stiles’ back and shoulders, and squeezes his hand. “You survived, so Peter probably won’t kill her. But I’m pretty sure your dad intends to put her in jail for the rest of her life.”

“Oh, good,” Stiles says, flopping back against the pillows. “I mean. I know she was just trying to protect her daughter, but shit, so was I. You know? And I was just thinking back to the way she, she lay in wait for me . . .” He shudders. “Yeah, I’m totally down with the idea of her going to prison. What’s going to happen to Marisela?”

“Your dad and Uncle Peter are going to adopt her,” Derek says, “though she doesn’t get along with Malia all that well yet. But she’s been getting better.”

“I have another little sister?” Stiles grins. “That’s awesome. When do I get to meet her?”

“Probably not until Arya is taken care of,” Derek says, and Stiles sulks. “It won’t be long now. God, I just want this to be over.”

“Yeah.” Stiles leans over and kisses Derek on the forehead. “I’m sorry I almost died on you.”

“Don’t even say that word,” Derek says, and shudders. “I don’t . . . don’t think I’m going to be ready to talk about that for a while.”

“We’re both going to end up in therapy again, aren’t we,” Stiles says, and Derek gives a little snort. “Well, that’s probably no bad thing.” He yawns and says, “Climb on up, babe. I’m going to fall asleep soon.”

“Okay.” Derek stands up and pulls his shirt off so he can shift.

“Oh my God,” Stiles says, holding up a hand to block his gaze. “That is un-fucking-fair, you know that? How long has it been since I’ve told you that you’re unreasonably gorgeous? And also your stupid smile and your tight T-shirts kind of make me want to throw myself at you. Plus you’re amazing in like eighteen hundred other ways; I love your green thumb and your books and how sweet and adorable you are.”

Derek chuffs a little, and climbs up on the bed, curling up on Stiles’ lower legs. He leans upwards and licks Stiles’ hand.

“We’re going to have the mother of all reunions once I get out of here,” Stiles promises, and yawns again. “Gonna make you . . . ginger molasses cookies, and . . . and have sex with you for like four straight hours . . .” His voice trails off as his eyes flutter shut. Derek rests his chin on Stiles’ foot and goes to sleep.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Tom is yawning as they get out of the car. “I could sleep for ten hours,” he says. “Do you need me for anything?”

Peter shakes his head. “I have a few things I need to do, but I don’t need your help. Get some rest.”

“No problem.” Tom reaches out and tugs on one of Malia’s pigtails. She growls at him, then giggles when he does it again. “You, miss, need a bath and then a bedtime story. What do you say?”

“Okay,” Malia says, taking his hand and letting him lead her into the house. Peter watches them go with a fond smile, and lingers there for a few moments, savoring of the feeling of his family, his pack, being whole again.

After that, he turns and heads towards the shed. He gives the door a quiet knock and then goes inside without waiting for Corinne to say anything. She’s sitting in the corner with her knees drawn up to her chest, her jaw set in an angry expression. “So,” he says, sitting down on the floor a few feet away, “we are on track to set the trap for Calaveras the day after tomorrow.”

“Did Marisela agree to your stupid idea or are you going to force her?” Corinne asks, body vibrating with tension.

“She agreed, as it happens,” Peter says. “She’s looking forward to living a normal life, being able to go to school. And don’t try to play moral high ground with me, Corinne. You sent her in to disarm Tom so you could murder Stiles in his hospital bed. If we’re going to talk about things we’ve convinced Marisela to help us with, I think you’re going to lose.”

Corinne’s jaw tightens further. “I didn’t put her in danger. I knew Tom wouldn’t hurt her, even if he realized she wasn’t Malia.”

“That’s true,” Peter says. “Of course, Arya won’t hurt her, either. Arya needs her alive.” He’s quiet, pensive, for a few moments. “Did Marisela know you were planning to kill Stiles, or why? I’m just curious.”

“No.” Corinne looks away. “I didn’t tell her why we were going there at all. I only told her what I needed her to do.”

“Mm. I wonder what would have happened later, if she ever found out that you made her an accomplice to murder.”

Corinne says nothing.

“Stiles survived, by the way,” Peter says, and Corinne’s eyes widen slightly. “Fortunately for you. If he had died, I wouldn’t have been able to stop Talia from killing you. Nor would I have wanted to.”

“How?” Corinne asks.

“Does it really matter? All you need to know is that we found a remedy for bite rejection, and that Stiles is going to live.”

Corinne rubs her hands up and down her arms as if cold. “So what does that mean for me?”

“As I expected, Tom does not want to kill you. So despite the fact that doing so would be my inclination, you get to live the rest of your life in prison.”

“I won’t last a week there and you know it. You think Calaveras can’t get to me there? Or that there aren’t other people I pissed off while I was dealing with the cartels?”

“Give me a little credit, Corinne. You’ll have a fake identity and a lawyer who will enter a plea bargain for you so you won’t have to face an actual trial. Oh, and Talia and the other alphas will remove your alpha power, of course. It’s too dangerous to keep an alpha in prison, even one designed to hold werewolves.”

Corinne looks away. “I know I made mistakes. I don’t know how to convince you that I did the best I could. Stiles is going to be okay, so – can’t we just put all that behind us?”

“No,” Peter says simply.

“Why not?” Corinne asks, her voice colored by frustration.

“Because wounds heal,” Peter says, “but scars don’t. And your attack on Stiles will leave scars on him, on all of us. If Stiles is more reluctant to pursue cases in the future, how many people might be hurt, how many criminals left unpunished? Tom nearly lost his only son. Do you think he’s going to wake up tomorrow morning and be the way he was before this happened? Malia already thought her parents were killed because of her, and now she had to deal with her brother nearly dying for the same reason. I can’t predict how everything will unfold. I just know that actions have consequences. You hurt my nephew, my step-son, my _friend_. And you will pay for that, Corinne. Tom has chosen the price. Be grateful that I didn’t get to do that myself.”

Corinne says nothing.

“Good night, Corinne,” Peter says, standing up. “I’ll come see you when it’s over.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles isn’t going to be needed for the trap they’re setting, but they end up discussing it in his hospital room just because that’s where Tom and Derek both want to be. Peter doesn’t mind. He’s gone over everything with Talia, and has her sitting on Corinne in case she gets any ideas about taking Marisela and running. Everyone else has been in earlier in the day to visit Stiles, but they’ve gone for now. It’s just the four of them. Stiles is moderately insane, as the boredom and the lycanthropy set in, but manages to sit down and listen as Peter gives them all a detailed description of the plan.

“See, here’s my concern,” Tom says, once he’s finished. “I don’t want anybody to get hurt – anybody who’s not in Calaveras, that is. If they actually run a raid on the den, they’re going to shoot first and ask questions never. We want to trick them into thinking they’ve taken the twins – how do we do that without them killing a bunch of us?”

“Oh, well, I don’t actually intend to trick anyone,” Peter says. “The hope is that we’ll be able to apprehend anyone who shows up, then dispatch one of them to bring the twins back to Arya.”

“And why would they do that?” Tom asks, frowning.

“Because I’ll let them live if they do,” Peter says, with a smile that shows teeth. When Tom still looks concerned, he says, “From their standpoint, it’s a better solution than dying. If they do bring the twins back to Arya, and then for whatever reason we’re unable to retake them, Arya would reward them, I’m sure. Not that I would allow that to happen,” he adds, “but it’s what their train of thought would be.”

“How would we stop them from warning Arya that we’re coming?” Derek asks. “Or finding the GPS tracker and removing it?”

“Because we’ll accompany them most of the way. Basically until we get to Arya’s doorstep. I won’t let the twins out of my sight until I have Arya _in_ my sight.”

Tom lets out a breath. “I guess it’ll work. I still don’t like the idea of the pack being in danger.”

“Well, the majority of them won’t be there,” Peter says. “Scott, Allison, Cora, and Isaac are going to be at Melissa’s house. Jonathan will take the children, including Talia’s twins, to his parents’ house. The only pack members who will be at the den besides the girls will be me, Aaron, Laura, and Derek.”

“And me,” Tom says.

Peter shakes his head. “I want you to stay here with Stiles.”

“I can take care of myself, you know,” Tom says.

“I know. But you’re human, Tom. You’re fragile in a way that the rest of us aren’t,” Peter says. Tom opens his mouth, and Peter reaches out, pressing his fingers against Tom’s lips. “Please don’t argue with me on this. I lost one mate. I can’t risk losing another.”

Tom sighs quietly, but then nods. “Okay. I’ll stay here.”

“But you want me there?” Derek asks.

Peter nods. “I’ll need at least a few hands on deck, especially because Laura is going to be watching Corinne. I don’t trust her not to try to take off beforehand. So it will be helpful to have you there to help me keep tabs on things.”

“Okay,” Derek says.

“You’ve been his assistant while I’ve been out of commission, huh?” Stiles says. “Isn’t he an enormous pain in the ass, with his crypticness and general refusal to tell you what he’s up to, in case it doesn’t work out and he might have to admit he was just making random shots in the dark?”

Derek snorts. Peter, on the other hand, gives Derek a genuinely fond look. “He’s getting quite good at Left Hand work,” he says, “even if he doesn’t handle it the same way I do, or you do. I don’t know that you’d ever be able to take the lead on it, but as an assistant, I’ve rarely had one better.”

“You can be the Left Wrist,” Stiles tells him, and Derek rolls his eyes but is clearly trying not to laugh.

Peter shakes his head, amused, but then turns to Tom. “Does this all seem satisfactory to you?”

“I think so. There are a few things about the plan I don’t like, but I don’t think there’s much we can do about that, since as of yet we haven’t been able to nuke Calaveras from orbit.”

“Would that we could,” Peter agrees. “But I think this will do nicely. Now, how about I go pick up some lunch? And I’m sure Malia is chafing at the bit to see you again.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Sounds great.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

It’s safe to say that the atmosphere in Stiles’ hospital room is tense. Peter is texting Tom every five minutes just to let him know that nothing has happened yet, and they’re all waiting for the hammer to drop. “What if they don’t take the bait? What if Travis wasn’t actually the guy?” Stiles is pacing around his hospital room, despite Tom’s best efforts to get him to stop. “What if they stole Peter’s phone and they’re just texting you – ”

“Stiles, calm down,” Tom says, steering him back over to the bed. “It’s not even fully dark out yet. They’re probably going to wait for that before they make a move.”

“Like werewolves can’t see in the dark,” Stiles mutters, but he allows himself to be steered. “Ugh, this sucks. I’m missing the fireworks, I’m missing the barbecue – ”

“Everyone’s missing those things because of what’s going on,” Tom reminds him. “We’ll just do it next week.”

“Right, okay, but they’re not stuck in the hospital,” Stiles says. “What am I going to do for the full moon? Are they going to keep me here? They can’t, I’ll go stir crazy. The first full moon is supposed to be really hard. You can’t make me spend it in an eight by ten cell.”

“Stiles, this is not a _cell_ ,” Tom says, rolling his eyes. “Look, I know that it’s frustrating to be stuck in there when you feel fine and you’re full of energy. But you have to remember that you’re still fully immunosuppressed, and we don’t know what would happen if you were exposed to some germ.”

“I know, Dad, I just . . .” Stiles huffs out a sigh. “Can you get me a new phone, at least?”

“I’m surprised nobody already has, to be honest,” Tom says. “Well, I guess everyone’s had a lot going on. But sure. First thing tomorrow morning, after all this Calaveras stuff is dealt with, I’ll bring you a brand new phone and your laptop.”

“Okay.” Stiles settles down into the bed and sighs. “Sorry if I’m being a jerk. It’s not like I want to get sick, it’s just . . . cognitive dissonance, I guess. I feel fine, so . . . it’s hard to remember that I actually need to be here.”

Tom smiles slightly. “Well, you’re not good at being pent-up. Never have been.”

“Yeah. But with my luck I’d probably get ebola within ten feet of the hospital grounds, so, you know. At least I get a private room. And at least they’ve let me start eating real food, Jesus Christ. I thought I was going to starve to death. By the way, don’t think I don’t know what your diet has been like while I’ve been sick. You’re going to get nothing but cauliflower and beets when I get home.”

“You know, given the way you’ve trained Malia to watch my diet, you really don’t have to worry,” Tom says. “I can’t count the number of times she’s told me ‘those better not be fries’.”

Stiles smirks. “I’ve trained her well. Which, now that we’re talking about it, is there anything to eat? Dinner was like, two whole hours ago. I’m hungry.”

“Sure.” Tom stands up and starts rooting around in their things. They’ve laid in supplies, since Stiles has been eating everything in sight and the hospital is only providing three meals a day. He’s looking for the box of Cheez-Its he knows is in there, thinking he’ll steal some, when he hears someone come in the room, and glances over his shoulder. The man is dressed like an orderly, and has a badge, but he’s not familiar to Tom. “Help you?”

“Sheriff Stilinski,” the man says, with a smile. “I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”

“Are you, now,” Tom says, glad that he’s wearing his gun. He risks a quick glance over at Stiles and sees that his son has taken the sensible route for once, and is pretending that he’s asleep. “And why am I going to do that?”

The man’s smile doesn’t fade. “Let’s be honest with each other, Sheriff. You know who I am and why I’m here. A little bit of extra insurance for Calaveras. I know that I can’t physically force you, not without you kicking up a fuss. But I didn’t come alone. I have men positioned throughout the hospital. Two of them are in the pediatric ward. There are eleven children admitted right now, for a variety of problems. My men have enough strychnine to kill them all. Oh, I imagine the nurses and doctors would be able to save some of them. But all of them? I highly doubt that.”

Tom lets out a slow breath. “So what’s the plan? Put a gun to my head, make Peter bring the twins to you?”

“Pretty much.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“He will. You’re his mate. He’d do anything for you, wouldn’t he?”

Tom decides against arguing with him. He’s not going to back down, no matter what Tom says. He’s under orders, and he won’t leave until Tom agrees to go with him. He tries to run this through his head, thinking about what’s going to happen next. They’re going to need a way to find him. Arya’s not stupid. She’s planned out everything. There’s no way she’s going to settle for a direct exchange; she’ll make Peter bring the twins to one place while promising to release Tom once her men have them in custody. That means that in order to rescue Tom – and find Arya – they’re going to need a way to track him. “Okay,” he says, slowly. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”

“Take out your gun,” the man says. “Keep in mind that I have to text my guys every two minutes to keep them from doing anything to the kids downstairs.”

Tom nods. He takes out the gun, holds it out to the side, and carefully sets it down on the table. The man picks it up and tucks it into his belt.

“Now your phone.”

With a sigh, Tom takes out his phone and puts it down. The man picks it up and drops it into the pitcher of water that’s sitting on the bedside table. “Anything else?”

“Since you ask, yes. Belt and shoes.”

Tom thinks about arguing, but he’s not going to get anywhere and he knows it. He takes them off, then says, “I’d like to say goodbye to my son.”

“What for? We’re not going to kill you.”

“Yeah, right!” Tom lets out a bark of laughter despite himself. “I’m sure Arya Calaveras got where she is today by leaving loose ends like me dangling in the wind. Get real.”

“Fair enough,” the man says, then gestures. “Make it quick.”

Tom steps over to Stiles’ bed and leans down, burying his face in the crook of Stiles’ shoulder. Under his breath, he says, “I need you to shift, Stiles. I need your claws.”

For a few moments, he thinks Stiles doesn’t understand and won’t obey, but then he sees the shape underneath the blanket change. He reaches down and squeezes Stiles’ hand, letting the claws dig into the palm of his hand as he does so. Then he backs away, leaving his fist loosely curled to hide the wounds. “Let’s go, if we’re going.”

The man nods, then gestures again, to the door. “No sudden movements, and don’t say anything to anyone.”

“Okay.” The nurses will probably think it’s odd, him leaving without his usual ‘good night’, but he doesn’t really care. A few moments later, they’re down the hall and in the elevator. Then the foyer, then the parking lot. The man points at a dark SUV, and Tom walks over. He’s glad for the color. It means nobody notices when he smears his hand along the side door as he gets in, leaving his blood all over it. The scent trail it will leave won’t last long. He can only hope it will last long enough.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	21. Chapter 21

 

Stiles forces himself to count to twenty, twenty seconds that seem like an eternity to him, before he jumps out of the bed. That’s enough time for his father and the man from Calaveras to get into the elevator, so they won’t see him.

He’s grateful now that he had gotten the others to bring him some of his clothes, freshly laundered and free of germs. Sure, it’s only flannel pants and a T-shirt, but that’s a lot better than wandering around in a hospital johnny would be. And he needs to get to his father sooner rather than later. It’s clear that Tom intends to leave a blood trail, but Calaveras is going to have a car waiting. Even if Tom gets some of his blood on the outside of the car, a trail like that can fade within minutes, depending on how busy the road is.

The smart thing to do would be to run down to the nurse’s station and find someone who can give him a phone. Then he could call Peter. But by the time Peter makes it here, from all the way out at the den, it’s altogether too likely that the trail will be gone. Then they’ll never find his father – at least, not in time.

Still, calling Peter is an imperative. Even if he can’t make it here, he needs to know what’s going on. So Stiles jogs out of his room and down the hall. The nurses immediately react to his presence like they’re nuns who are about to take a yardstick to his knuckles. “What are you doing out of bed?” the nurse demands.

“I need to use your phone,” Stiles says, and something about the look in his eyes makes her agree without argument.

“We’re not allowed to have cell phones at our desks,” she says, handing him the desk phone instead. “What’s the number?”

He dictates Peter’s number to her, and it only rings once before answering. Peter picks up sounding tight and worried; he can see that it’s a local area code but he doesn’t recognize the number. Stiles realizes that Peter knows his father is hurt, since Peter can feel the same pain. He’s expecting a call from Calaveras, most likely, and answers with, “This is Peter Hale. Who – ”

“It’s Stiles. Some guy from the, the skulls just turned up and took my father with him.”

Peter swears underneath his breath. “Stiles, I want you to – ”

Stiles interrupts him. “My dad had me cut his hand with my claws, he’s going to leave a trail, so I’m going to go follow it, and, and I’ll figure out what to do once I get to where they’ve taken my dad, okay? Maybe I can find someone there with a phone I can borrow – ”

“Stiles, you can’t!” It’s Derek’s voice; he’s clearly grabbed the phone from his uncle when he heard what was going on. “You, you’re still immunocompromised, you can’t – give us a few minutes and we can get down to the hospital – ”

“There’s no time!” Stiles says. “That trail is only going to last a few minutes, if that. I have to go. I’ll figure something out. I love you,” he adds, and then practically flings the handset of the phone at the nurse before running over to the stairs. She shouts after him, but he ignores her.

Tracking his father’s scent down to the parking lot is easy. He can’t say how he knows how to do it, or how he even recognizes it, but he does. He ends up in the parking lot, standing in the space where the car that took his father away had been.

Now the scent of his blood gets much more faint. But he can still smell it. He takes a deep breath and jogs after the car. It feels good to be moving for the first time in weeks. Better than good. Adrenaline and endorphins flood his system, and he shifts without even thinking about it, bounding after his father’s trail in enormous leaps. The act of running gives him such a simple joy that it washes away some of the fear, and actually makes it a little difficult to concentrate. He realizes a few minutes later that he’s overshot, that he’s lost his father’s scent. He has to force himself to slow down and go back to the corner where he lost it, sniffing cautiously until he’s figured out which way they’ve gone.

The trail takes him into downtown, the warehouse district, and he almost laughs as he realizes where they’ve gone. They’re in Peter’s loft. It actually makes sense. They would need a safe place to go, somewhere they were sure was soundproofed and had good visibility to see anybody coming. Peter had chosen his safe house for those exact reasons, and Arya was just riding his coat tails.

“Okay, it is on now, you bastards,” Stiles says to himself. “You think you’re so fucking clever, huh? Think you can steal Peter’s hideout without it biting you on the ass? Let’s rock and roll.”

It’s easy to climb the fire escape of a building about a block away and get up to the roof. Less easy to jump from one roof to the next until he gets to Peter’s safe house, but he makes it. He has to stop and take a deep breath then. He knows that Peter doesn’t leave the trap door on the roof locked because he often goes in and out that way, if he doesn’t want to be seen. The hinges are always oiled, so it opens smoothly and silently. He glances inside to see that the top floor is empty, as he had hoped it would be. There was no reason for them to go up there, after searching it to make sure it was empty.

He drops down into the room as quietly as possible, glad now for his bare feet. Then he waits in a crouch to see if anybody heard him. It seems that nobody has. He crosses the room to the false brick that hides the phone and charger.

There’s way too much risk that the phone will make a noise when he turns it on, so after a moment to consider, he decides he’ll have to go back to the roof to make the call. He can’t do that without making sure his father is okay, so he lies down on the floor next to where the spiral staircase comes out, and risks a quick peek.

He sees absolutely nothing in that 0.02 seconds he takes, and takes a moment to steel his nerves before dipping his head back down for a longer look. There are six people in the room, including Arya and his father. Tom is on his knees with his hands behind his head, but he’s whole and unharmed. There’s a man standing right behind him with a gun, but he isn’t actively aiming it. They don’t seem to be doing much at the moment. They’re waiting.

Stiles heads for the trap door, but then he hears voices down below. Slowly, he inches back towards the staircase to hear what’s going on.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

The instant Stiles hangs up the phone, Derek is halfway into his jacket and fumbling for his car keys. Peter gets him by the wrist and says, “Hang on, nephew. Stiles is right. By the time you get to the parking lot, the scent trail will long gone.”

Derek growls at his uncle. “Tom’s might be, but what about Stiles’? I might be able to follow his – ”

“True, you might be,” Peter says, “but I think there are better ideas. I need to call the police and get the security footage from the hospital. It’ll be easier to trace the car than it will be to track the scent. Come sit down,” he adds. “They won’t hurt Tom, not until we’ve seen that they have him in custody. Remember, they don’t know that Stiles called us – they probably assume he’s not able to leave his room.”

“Because he shouldn’t be,” Derek growls. “And if they see him, they _will_ kill him.”

“Have a little faith in your mate, Derek,” Peter says. “Do you think I’ve taught him nothing?”

Derek paces around the room in tight little circles while Peter gets on his phone, talking to Parrish, who’s still down at the station. “What do we do once we know where he is?”

“Well, we go get him, of course,” Peter says.

“Yes, but _how_ ,” Derek insists.

“That will depend a lot on where Arya has taken him for safekeeping,” Peter says. “And, of course, if Arya is there herself. Now, if Stiles is able to track them and then call us, we’ll have a lot more data than if we’re able to track the car on the traffic cameras.”

“And you’re _sure_ I shouldn’t go down to the hospital?” Derek asks.

“I’m very sure, Derek.” Peter looks up at this. “Derek. This is my mate. Do you think I would leave him in _any_ danger, if I could avoid it? If you going to the hospital would help, I would have told you to go the instant Stiles called. But we can’t rush into this. We’re only going to have one chance to get this right.”

Derek says nothing, and continues to pace. A few moments later, Peter’s cell phone rings, and he picks it up. “Hale.”

“It’s Braeden,” the voice on the other end says. “Someone just turned down the road. You’re going to think I’m crazy, but it’s a pizza delivery guy.”

“Interesting,” Peter says, and hangs up. “It makes sense,” he adds, for Derek’s benefit. “They have to have someone bring the message to us, after all.” Without waiting for Derek to reply, he leaves the house and heads out to the front. The car, clearly labeled with a Papa John’s delivery top, pulls up to the front door, and the teenager who gets out is in their uniform. Peter takes the stack of three pizza boxes, thanks him, and says good night.

“What the fuck, Peter,” Derek says, as he sets them down on the ground. Then he stops as Peter flips the first box open to reveal a laptop. “What the fuck,” Derek says again, more out of confusion than anything else.

Peter takes the laptop out and turns it on. It doesn’t ask for a password, and Skype opens as soon as it’s booted up. A few moments later, it gives that obnoxiously jaunty tune that indicates an incoming call, and he hits the button to accept.

“Mr. Hale,” Arya says, with a smug smile on her face. “I hope you’re having a lovely evening.”

“Well, it’s taken a few twists and turns,” Peter says. “The hospital called me, so don’t try to play games. Where is my husband?”

“Right here.” Arya turns the laptop slightly, so they can see Tom. He’s on his knees with his hands behind his head, and he looks – honestly, he looks more pissed off than anything else. Derek sees some of the tension go out of Peter’s shoulders. “I assume you’d like him back unharmed.”

“And likewise I assume you have no intention of letting him go, so we’re at a bit of an impasse, don’t you think?”

“Such a cynic, Mr. Hale,” Arya says, amused. “Bring the twins to the location I specify, and you can have your mate back in one piece.”

“How do I know you won’t kill him the minute your men have the twins in custody?”

“You don’t,” Arya says. “You only know that I _will_ kill him, if you don’t do as I say. You have one hour.”

The call ends. A moment later, Peter’s phone buzzes to indicate an incoming text.  He glances down at it to see a location that’s about a forty-five minute drive away. “Not going to give us any time to think or come up with a plan, I see,” he murmurs.

“Peter!” Derek snaps. “What do we do?”

Peter is silent, his expression tightly focused, for several long seconds. Derek can tell that he’s ticking through the options. “We wait. For five minutes.”

“What? Why?” Derek sputters.

“Five minutes is all we can spare for Stiles to find his father and find a way to call us. If he doesn’t, we’ll head to the rendezvous and attempt to take Arya’s men and force them to bring us to her, the same we would have if they had showed up here.”

Derek grimaces a little. He doesn’t want to do that, and he knows that Peter doesn’t, either. Here, they have the home advantage. No matter where Arya sends them, it’s going to have her men already in place. She’ll have snipers with wolfsbane bullets at the ready. It might also have surveillance, which means that if Peter takes down her men, Arya might know, and might kill Tom before Peter can get to them. It’s a terrible idea, and he wracks his mind for a better one. “Come on, Stiles,” he mutters. “Come on.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles is loath to let his father out of his sight, but he doesn’t dare call from inside, and he doesn’t think that he’ll be able to give enough information over text. So he climbs back out onto the roof, carefully closing the door behind him, before dialing. Peter again picks up on the first ring, but this time demands, “Stiles?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Stiles says. “We’re at your safe house.”

“Really?” Peter sounds a little startled. “Well, I suppose it would be a good place for them. They just called us – ”

“Yeah, I heard.”

Derek’s voice comes over the line, tight and anxious. “Where are you? Are you safe?”

“I’m on the roof. I don’t think they’ve realized I’m here. I jumped up to a roof about a block away and came over that way. I only went inside long enough to get the phone and see how many people are here.”

“How many?” Peter asks.

“Four in the room, plus Arya and my dad,” Stiles says. “But I’m sure they’ve got a perimeter set up. I just don’t know how to find it – ”

“Don’t try. You’re not trained for that sort of thing and if they catch sight of you, they’ll kill you and your father, and disappear. You just sit tight. We’re on our way. But we’ll need you inside once we get there.”

“How are you going to get inside without Arya killing you?”

“I’ll bring Malia. They won’t be able to tell which twin I have with me, and by bringing one, they’ll know I’ve hidden the second away and they’ll never find her if they kill me.”

“Uh, you don’t really have time to hide her anywhere,” Stiles says, uncertain.

“I know that, but they don’t. They’ll probably assume I did it before setting up for the trap which they cleverly did not fall into. Trust me; I’ll be fine. Once I get inside, I’ll be able to take down Arya and her men. But I’m concerned about the one directly behind Tom. I could see him in the video. I won’t be able to get to him before he pulls the trigger, so you’re going to have to do that yourself.”

Stiles lets out a breath and tries not to let terror color his voice. “Sure, uh, okay. I can do that.”

“They’ll all be looking at me. I’ll draw things out long enough to give you time to get down the stairs without them noticing you. You know how to do this, Stiles. Laura’s taught you, and you’re stronger now.”

“But what if he pulls the trigger when I make a move?” Stiles blurts out. “What if he shoots my dad by, by accident?”

“Watch him, Stiles. Hopefully he won’t have his finger on the trigger. If he does, I’ll make a move. If I can keep them focused on me, you can keep your father from getting shot.”

“But then _you’ll_ get shot,” Stiles says.

Peter sounds somewhat exasperated. “We don’t have all day to discuss every eventuality, Stiles. Just wait until he doesn’t have the gun aimed directly at your father and then take him.” He hangs up without another word.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

“Come on, come on, come on,” Derek snaps at his uncle, who’s packing a few things into a briefcase.

“We’ve got time, Derek,” Peter says. “Not a lot, grant you, but I want to be sure that I’m prepared. In fact . . .” He frowns at the briefcase as he closes it, then shakes his head and says, “Ah, never mind. It’ll sort itself out, I’m sure.”

Derek wants to ask what the hell _that_ means, but doesn’t bother because Peter obviously isn’t going to explain it. Instead, he turns to the two little girls who have been sitting in the kitchen, eating cookies. Marisela scowls at him suspiciously. “All right, you two,” Peter says. “Malia, I’m going to need you to come with me. Marisela, go to the shed with your mother. Tell her I know where Arya is and I’m going to go take care of her. Okay?”

“Okay,” Marisela says, looking happy that she’s not being asked to go with them, and hops to her feet.

Peter is already back on his phone, texting. Derek shakes his head a little and takes Malia by the hand, trying to nudge Peter along. After a brief moment, he tucks his phone away and says, “All right, nephew. Let’s go get our mates.”

Derek nods and practically jumps into the Camaro. “Are you sure we should bring Malia?” he asks, as he roars down the main road.

“It’s the only way we’ll get near Arya with our limbs intact,” Peter says. “But that will only protect me. You’re going to have to go up and over.”

Derek likes that idea, because it means he’ll be reunited with Stiles all the sooner. “Okay.”

“Do you remember which building it is?”

“I think so. But it won’t matter; once we get close enough I’ll be able to find Stiles.”

“Ah, true.” Peter is still busily texting as Derek turns onto the main road in a squeal of tires. “It will depend a little on exactly how far out their perimeter is set, but to be honest it can’t be that far. Stiles said he went up about a block away, and they didn’t see him. They’ve probably just set up around the building itself, maybe one or two guys on the closest corners.”

“Okay. If I can come in through the roof, then, I can take the guy behind Tom, right? So Stiles doesn’t have to.”

Peter glances at him. “I suppose so. Stiles is fully capable, you know.”

“Stiles has been a werewolf for forty-eight hours, he has _no_ idea how to control his strength or his shift,” Derek shoots back. “He’s still immunocompromised and should be in the God damned hospital! If Stiles taking that guy out was the only option, then I’d give it my blessing, but it’s not. I’ll be there; I can handle this.”

Peter nods. “As you say.”

Derek scowls at him and drives faster. A few minutes later, he skids into a parking space and is out of the car almost before Peter can say anything. But then he hesitates, turning back at the last second, grabbing Peter by the wrist. “Be careful.”

“I’ll be fine, nephew,” Peter says, but then adds, “You too.”

Derek sprints away without another word, scaling the side of a building and jumping onto the next roof. He can barely contain himself, fear spurring him on. He makes the run in about half the time he would normally take, and nearly bowls Stiles over with his arrival. “Thank God you’re okay,” he says, practically crushing Stiles to his chest.

“Same,” Stiles mumbles, rubbing his cheek into Derek’s shoulder. Despite the tense situation, Derek smiles a little, pleased that Stiles is scent-marking him for the first time. He rubs a hand up and down Stiles’ back. “What’s happening, what are you doing up here?”

“I persuaded Peter to let me come up here and help you,” Derek says. “I couldn’t go with him anyway. They won’t shoot him if they think he hid Marisela, but they’d sure as shit shoot me.”

“Okay. Okay, okay.” Stiles lets out a breath. “Let’s go rescue my dad.”

Derek nods. “Yeah, but you stay back, okay? Let me handle this.”

“Thanks. Really. Just.” Stiles runs both hands back through his hair. They’re trembling, and Derek reaches out to take both of them, squeezing them tightly.

“It’s going to be okay,” he says firmly. “Come on inside but wait on the second floor.” He jogs over to the trap door and carefully lifts it, taking off his shoes so he can walk softly, then lowers himself down. Stiles follows him, leaving the trap door open in case they need to make a quick exit. Derek heads over to the spiral staircase, but waits there. He can’t make an entrance until after Peter comes in, or else someone is sure to notice him.

Fortunately, it’s not a long wait. Barely thirty seconds have gone by before he hears a cell phone ring. “Report,” Arya says.

“Peter Hale just crossed our perimeter,” Derek hears a voice say.

“Hijo de puta,” Arya mutters. “How the hell did he find us? And why are you calling me? Take him out, you moron!”

“He’s got one of the girls,” the voice says. “Just one.”

This time Arya’s profanity is too low-pitched for Derek to translate. “All right. Let him through, keep him in your sights, call me when he enters the building.” She hangs up and starts giving orders to her men in rapid-fire Spanish. Derek’s fluent enough to understand she’s putting two of her men against the door’s wall, so they’ll be behind Peter when he comes in. The other is to stay at her side, while the last stays behind Tom.

“Which one does he have with him?” Arya demands.

“How should I know?” Tom replies, sounding surly.

“You know him better than anyone, don’t you? Would he bring your daughter and risk her life, because she’s not the one who was cured? Or would he bring her twin, so Malia can be safe, but risk us getting hold of a way to cure lycanthropy?”

“Would he bring Marisela, knowing you’ll _think_ he’s bringing Malia because she’s not cured?” Tom fires back. “Or would he bring Malia, knowing you’ll _think_ he’s bringing Marisela because she’s not our daughter? Come on. I’m not getting drawn into this. I have no idea which of them he would choose to bring. His mind is full of twists and turns and little alleys and hidden corners. I can’t think the way he does.”

“So tell me which one you would bring,” Arya says, “and then I can assume he’d bring the other.”

“I wouldn’t bring either of them,” Tom fires back. “I’d call in a God damned tactical team and shoot every last person here, including my husband, before I let you get your hands on either of those little girls.”

Arya’s mouth purses, and then her phone rings again. “Coming up,” the voice on the other end says.

A moment later, the loft door opens, and Peter comes in, with Malia walking a pace ahead of him. She growls as soon as she sees Arya, a noise that’s strangely loud in the silence. Derek is glad to see the two men on the wall immediately turn so they’re facing Peter and can train their guns on him. That makes it far less likely that they’ll notice him. He slowly pads his way down the steps.

“Mr. Hale,” Arya says. “Where is the other girl?”

“Somewhere safe,” Peter replies. “Hidden. Et cetera, et cetera. I’ll let you know where as soon as I’ve safely escorted my husband off the premises.”

“Certainly,” Arya says, “as long as you leave this little one here with me.”

“Please,” Peter says, rolling his eyes. “Try to be constructive.”

“You think you have options here?” Arya says. “I’m tempted to just shoot you both and save myself some trouble. I’ll find her eventually.”

Peter gives a somewhat dramatic sigh. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t try to negotiate. I guess instead I’ll just have to kill you all.”

Derek leaps forward, taking the man behind Tom in a full tackle. His gun goes off, but the bullet goes over Tom’s shoulder as Derek carries him down. Tom instinctively throws himself forward, on top of Malia, shielding her from the gunfire. The other men are all firing, but Peter is a whirlwind of teeth and claws. Derek feels blood spatter onto his cheek as he wrestles his target’s gun away from him, then springs to his feet to see if his uncle needs help. He doesn’t. Two men are already down, and Peter tears out the throat of the last just as Derek gets up. The man Derek had tackled lunges upwards, and Derek jerks the gun around, startled. He fires once, and the man crumples back to the floor.

“All right, Derek?” Peter asks, and Derek nods. “Tom?”

“Yeah.” Tom pushes himself to his knees. His gaze flicks around the room, and then he swears. “Where’s Arya?”

“Shit,” Peter snarls, and turns towards the loft door.

Derek looks out the window and sees Arya exit the building, jogging towards an SUV that’s parked on the street. “Uncle Peter, hurry!” he shouts, as she yanks the driver’s side door open and climbs in. “She’s getting into – ”

He hasn’t finished his sentence before there’s an enormous boom, so loud that it shakes the foundations of the building and shatters the windows. Derek finds himself on the floor, his ears ringing and his body covered in shards of glass. Someone is shaking him, saying his name. He manages to open his eyes to see Stiles hovering over him. “Are you okay?” Stiles demands.

“Yeah,” Derek says fuzzily, as Stiles helps him sit up. “Jesus. What just happened?”

“An explosion.” Tom, further away from the window, had stayed on his feet.

Derek looks out the window to see the remains of the SUV roaring with flame. “Jesus Christ,” he says, and staggers towards the door, shouting Peter’s name.

“I’m all right,” Peter says, as Derek rounds the door. “I hadn’t made it to the street yet. The walls sheltered me, probably better than the windows shielded you.”

“What the hell happened?” Stiles asks, as they jog down the stairs and to the street. Arya’s car is sitting on the corner, roaring with flames. Stiles instinctively puts up one hand to shield himself from the heat. “Holy shit.”

Tom picks Malia up, and she wraps her arms around his neck, cuddling her face into his shoulder. He pats her back absently, then looks at Peter and slowly lets out a breath. “Corinne?” he asks, and Peter nods.

“Corinne?” Stiles looks spooked, his head whipping around. “Where?”

“Easy, easy,” Peter says, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder. “She won’t be hurting you again. Or anyone else, I suspect.”

Stiles looks at him blankly for a moment, then back at the car. His eyes widen. “Is she . . . oh my God. Was she, she waiting for Arya in the car? That’s what she did to me.” A fine shudder goes through his body, and Derek pulls him into an embrace. “Waited for me in my backseat.”

“Why would she do that, though?” Derek asks quietly. “Couldn’t she have, have wired it to the ignition or something?”

“She would only have had a few minutes while we were keeping Calaveras distracted,” Peter says, “and very little in the way of supplies, as well. Before we left, I texted Aaron to tell him not to stop Corinne from leaving. I had gathered most of her things in the main house for safekeeping, but moved the more dangerous ones to the safe at the police station. She wouldn’t have had the time or the means for a remote detonator or a timer. And she would have wanted to be sure, I think. I would have done the same thing in her shoes. But we won’t know for sure until the fire department gets here and they’re able to identify the bodies. The latter might take some time.”

“But we’re sure Arya’s dead?” Tom asks, cradling Malia closer.

Derek nods. “I saw her get in the car literally a millisecond before it exploded. No way could she have survived.”

“Okay.” Tom lets out a sigh of relief. “Then it’s finally over.”

Peter nods, reaching out absently to touch Malia’s shoulder, then Tom’s. “We’re going to have some clean up to do. I – ”

“You,” Tom interrupts, shifting Malia in his arms to transfer her to Peter’s, “will take our daughter home. Derek, take Stiles back to the hospital, get him back into isolation. I can hear sirens. This is going to be a police matter, now. No arguments,” he adds, as Peter pouts. “We’re not sweeping this underneath the rug, if we even could – which I doubt, since hundreds of people must have heard that explosion. What were you going to do, say it was fireworks?”

Peter just gives a shrug and says, “All right, Tom, as you say. I’ll get Malia home and check on the others. Derek, Stiles, I’ll give you a lift back to the hospital.”

“Okay.” Stiles reaches out and hugs his father tightly, then heads for the car. He climbs into the back, and Malia gets in next to him, and he reaches out, folding her smaller hand into his own.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter is mildly NSFW =D

 

Stiles is trying not to pout while he scrubs himself in the shower before putting on a clean hospital gown and getting back into bed. He sees Derek smiling, though, and that makes him sulk despite his best efforts. “You know what, I think I’ve been very good about this,” he grumbles as he settles against the pillows. “I feel fine. I’m obviously not going to drop dead as soon as I leave the hospital. This is all very unnecessary.”

“Uh huh,” Derek says, still smiling. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Ugh, you sap,” Stiles says, and leans over for a kiss. “I can’t stay mad at you. You’re the worst.”

“I know.” Derek twines his fingers through Stiles’. “I think we probably can talk to the doctors about letting you out for the full moon, actually. Since it seems obvious that you won’t drop dead, like you said. And to be fair, being here during your first full moon really would be literal torture.”

“Seriously? You’ll talk to them?” Stiles asks, and Derek nods. “Oh my God, I love you. I knew I was going to lose my mind and nobody was listening to me.”

“Given the emotional effects of the Bite, you really _have_ been very good about this,” Derek says, amused.

“I know. Hey, I’m starved. Is there anything to eat?”

“Sure.” Derek gets up to look around in the bags, and then looks over when Stiles shudders, and his scent is suddenly flooded with fear and adrenaline. “What is it?”

“I just – déjà vu. That’s exactly what happened right before the guy from Calaveras came in and took my dad. I asked if there was anything to eat, and he got up to get me something.” Stiles rubs his hands over his arms, hugging himself. “I pretended to be asleep because I didn’t know what else to do. It was just . . . really fucking scary.”

“I know.” Derek puts down the box of crackers and climbs up onto the narrow bed. Stiles manages to squirm around so he’s lying on top of Derek, resting his head against Derek’s shoulder, letting Derek hold him and rub comforting circles into his back.

“What about you?” Stiles asks. “Are you okay?”

Derek shrugs. “I don’t want to let you out of my sight for the next, oh, eternity,” he says, “but other than that I think I’m okay.”

“You killed that guy, though, didn’t you?” Stiles asks. “I remember you telling me about that time you went Left Handing with Peter and didn’t want to kill anyone. So are you okay?”

Derek lets out a breath. “Peter was right. The circumstances were, were totally different. I just reacted, you know? Your father’s life was in danger and I protected him. It was simple, maybe simpler than it should have been. So yeah, I’m okay.”

“Okay. I felt pretty much the same way after I killed Deucalion. Like, I didn’t really feel bad? But then I wondered if not feeling bad was bad.”

“Well, you didn’t have the benefit of Peter having given you a pre-murder pep talk.”

Stiles snorts into Derek’s chest. “Yeah, that’s true.” His stomach growls. “Okay, food.” He sits up and reaches for the crackers. “Do you think Peter’s right? About Corinne?”

“I don’t know,” Derek admits. “I hope he is. But . . .”

“But the suspicious part of you can’t help but wonder if she’s just faking her own death so she doesn’t have to go to prison? Yeah, same. It’s hard to imagine her leaving Marisela like that. And I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for her.”

“Yeah.” Derek reaches over and rubs Stiles’ back as he starts eating. “But Peter will take care of it. You know? That’s what he does.”

“Yeah.” Stiles lets out a breath and relaxes. “Yeah, you’re right.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

By the time Tom gets home, it’s nearly dawn. He checks on Malia first, and finds her sound asleep in her bed on the porch. Peter isn’t in their room, and he finds him out back, curled up in the Papasan chair. He looks up when Tom comes out the back door, and sits up to make room for Tom, who flops down next to him.

“Check on Malia?” Peter asks, and Tom nods. “Marisela is asleep at Laura’s. I went over to check on her when I got home. She’d fallen asleep after her mother left.”

“That’s good,” Tom says. “Not that I’m going to enjoy telling her that her mother’s dead.”

“Are we sure?” Peter asks.

Tom shrugs. “Not yet. There were definitely two bodies in the car, and one of them was in the back seat, where Corinne is more likely to have been in that scenario. But I don’t know how we’re going to be sure that it’s her. Born wolves don’t have dental records.”

Peter nods a little. “We’ll have to match DNA. I made sure to keep the bandages Corinne used after you shot her, and preserve them properly, just in case we needed them.”

“Of course you did,” Tom says, somewhat amused despite himself. “That might take a few weeks, though. We’ll have to keep a close eye on Marisela in the meantime, in case Corinne is alive, and comes back for her.”

“Mm.”

Tom glances at him. “What do you think? You don’t have to bullshit me. I know you might not have wanted to be totally honest in front of Stiles, after what she did to him.”

“I think she’s dead,” Peter says. “I’m not sure, but . . . I think it’s more likely than not. She didn’t want to go to jail. And she could have easily killed Arya without resorting to explosives. Just wait in the car and tear her throat out. Why the explosives if she wasn’t aiming to get herself killed, as well?”

“To fake her own death, presumably,” Tom says.

“True. But I still maintain that, given the time and the equipment she had, she couldn’t have wired it to the ignition or had a remote detonator. And she wouldn’t have just used a timer – no way to guarantee that Arya would be in the car when it went off that way. I guess anything’s possible, but it seems unlikely.” Peter shakes his head. “No, I think Corinne saw a way out and she took it.”

“It’s just hard for me to swallow,” Tom says.

“I know. But you didn’t interact with her as much as I did, and you didn’t . . . understand her, the way I did. Corinne had been on the run, one way or another, for most of her life. I think she truly did regret having left Malia in the forest, and having attacked Stiles. And I think she was starting to realize that someday, Marisela was going to know why she had done those things, and the answer ‘I was protecting you’ might not have satisfied her. I think in Corinne’s mind, this was how to redeem herself in her daughter’s eyes.”

“By leaving her?”

“She was going to be doing that one way or another, and she knew it.” Peter shakes his head. “She would have gone to prison, knowing that we would have taken over raising Marisela, that we would have done a better job. That just by virtue of the fact that Calaveras was no longer a threat, Marisela would have a better, happier life. Would you want to sit back and watch that happen? Watch your child grow away from you because of mistakes you had made? Better to die clean, in Corinne’s opinion. Kill Arya, save Marisela’s future for good, and die before she had to worry about whether or not her daughter would ever forgive her for the things she had done.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Tom shakes his head. “Maybe I just don’t think that way. Either way, I want to be sure.”

“Of course. We will be.” Peter leans over, brushes some of Tom’s hair out of his face, and kisses him. “You were magnificent, by the way.”

“Oh, yeah?” Tom looks skeptical. “I got abducted and basically sat around with a gun at my head for an hour.”

“But you gave us a way to find you. You protected our daughter, and you trusted me to protect your son.” Peter kisses him again. “Then you bossed me around and sent me home. I _do_ enjoy it when you give me orders.”

Tom gives a snort. “Well, thank God for that.”

Peter glances over his shoulder. “Malia is waking up. We should get her some breakfast, and then go see to her sister.”

“Okay.” Tom sits up and rubs both hands over his face. “Then I’ll go down to the hospital and – ”

“You will stay here and sleep,” Peter says. “You’ve been up all night. If you can be bossy, I can too.”

Tom gives him an annoyed look, but then laughs quietly. “Okay, fine. I’ll get a few hours of sleep first.”

They get Malia settled down with a bowl of cereal, and she groans and asks how long it’ll be before Stiles is back to cook for her. Tom laughs despite himself, thinking that maybe later he’ll go around and take requests from everyone so Stiles can put together a grocery list. It wouldn’t do for him to come back to a house that isn’t well-stocked with what he needs to spend a week in the kitchen.

Once she’s eating, and Aaron is keeping an eye on her, Tom and Peter go over to Laura’s house. Marisela is sitting on the sofa, watching cartoons. She scowls at both of them when they come in, but her lower lip wobbles. Tom sits down next to her on the sofa, and she says, “Mama’s not coming back. I know.”

Tom is a little taken aback by this. “How?”

“She told me last night.” Marisela snuffles and refuses to look at them. “That if she wasn’t back by morning, it meant she wasn’t coming back. She’s said that before, but she’s always come back.”

Tom reaches out and smoothes a hand over Marisela’s hair, his heart aching. “I’m sorry, Marisela. We don’t know for sure yet, but it looks like she died.” He hates saying it, but he knows that you have to be clear, especially with children. “She killed Arya, though, so you’re safe now. I know we’re not your mother, but we’ll keep you safe.”

“I know.” Marisela smiles a wounded little smile, although tears are trickling down her cheeks. “Mama told me that last night. Usually when she said she might not come back, she told me where the money was and that I should run. But this time she said I should stay. She said you’d protect me.”

“She was right,” Peter says, drawing Marisela into an embrace against his shoulder. “Come on, little one. Let’s get you something to eat.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Come midday, Stiles is chafing at the bit to get the hell out of his hospital room. He’s pacing back and forth in tight little circles, bitching and moaning and occasionally sassing. “I’m just saying, I clearly survived out of isolation so this is all very unnecessary – ”

Derek ignores him, as he has the past twenty times. “Four days to go,” he says in reply, and Stiles groans like he’s in actual pain. Which Derek figures he might be. He can feel the waxing of the moon, too. Stiles has only been a werewolf for three days now, and although Derek has never experienced it himself, he knows that the mood swings it brings on are not to be sneezed at.

“I’m going to go insane!” Stiles declares three minutes later, his claws shredding another pillow. “I’m not going to make it four days, come on, Derek, you can _clearly_ see that I’m not going to make it four days. I’m bored out of my skull and, and every inch of me is _itching_. Do you know what that feels like? My skin is actually crawling with boredom. It’s like before I was diagnosed with ADD only five times worse. I need something to _do_.”

“Well,” a new voice says, as his father enters with Peter and Malia behind him, “I might be able to help with that.”

“Give me a piggy back ride!” Malia says, jumping on Stiles’ shoulders. He gladly obliges, although their tour around the room is quite short. He tosses her up in the air a few times, which makes her giggle, but has to stop when she nearly hits the ceiling. He’s still getting a handle on his own strength.

“I brought you something,” Tom says, as Stiles finally sits down, momentarily mellow. “I went around to the pack and asked each of them what they wanted you to cook once you were home.”

“Oh, yeah?” Stiles perks up. “Okay, lay it on me.”

Tom pulls out his phone and starts reading. “Talia asked for chicken and cashews. Aaron would like beef stroganoff.” He continues to list off the choices of each pack member while Stiles looks happier by the second. When he gets to the end of the list, he says, “I also took pictures of the refrigerator and the pantry so you knew what we had, so you could make a shopping list.”

“Awesome!” Stiles says. “Derek, can you grab my laptop – ”

The list keeps him occupied for an hour, while he looks up each recipe to see what he needs and then makes a list for his father to take to the grocery store.

“What about you?” Derek asks, when he’s done.

“Hm?” Stiles asks.

“You should make something _you_ want,” Derek says. “Not just things for everybody else.”

“Oh, yeah. Good point. Hm. I want . . .” Stiles loses track of what he was saying as he stares at Derek’s mouth. “Things I can’t have in a kitchen.”

Peter snorts and murmurs, “Like you two have never had sex in that kitchen.”

“Hey, that’s nobody’s business,” Stiles says, flushing pink.

“Focus,” Tom says, amused. “Let’s keep it G-rated. Or at least PG.”

“Tacos,” Stiles says. “Those chicken tacos I make in the, the thing that cooks things all day. Oh my God, I’m so hungry now. Who would I have to bribe for someone to go get me a cheeseburger?”

“I think that could be arranged,” Peter says, standing up.

“Wait, hang on,” Stiles says. “Uncle P, I have to talk to you. You’re the, the rational one here.” He sees his father and Derek give him identical stares of disbelief. “Okay, not like, _actually_ , but, you’re the one with the most distance from me being in danger. Like, when I went after my dad and Calaveras, you were on board, whereas these two would rather wrap me in blankets and keep me in a bubble.”

Peter arches an eyebrow and says, “Get to the point, Stiles.”

“I don’t _really_ have to stay in the hospital, do I? Talk sense into these two! I left last night and I was fine, I didn’t even catch a sniffle. I’m going insane being stuck in here.”

Peter sits back down. “A number of points. First off: I sympathize. I do. I’m not very good at being penned up myself – actually, I’m quite awful at it. In your shoes, I would certainly be demanding the same thing, and would probably take it upon myself to sneak out if people wouldn’t allow me to leave legitimately. Secondly: I believe you’re correct. The danger of you being outside the hospital while on immunosuppressants seems to be quite minimal. You’re clearly not about to drop dead from the first germ you come into contact with.”

“Right, so – ”

“Thirdly,” Peter continues, “I’m also aware that the mood swings that come with being a newly turned werewolf can be quite intense, which is exacerbating the situation, I’m sure. So if you’d like to beat the shit out of me, I’ll be your punching bag. If you want me to keep watch for the nurses so you can debauch Derek in your hospital bed, I’m happy to help. But you will not be setting one foot outside this hospital until you’ve received your last dose of immunosuppressants and the doctor has cleared you to go.”

“Oh my God,” Stiles moans. “You’re so _unfair_ , you’re the _worst_ – ”

“You,” Peter says pointedly, “do not know what it means to lose a child. You don’t know what it feels like to lose a mate. You don’t understand what the last two weeks have been like for Tom and Derek, but I do. I am the _last_ person in this pack who is going to clear you to risk your life if it’s not necessary, Stiles.”

“Get in here so I can beat the shit out of you,” Stiles demands.

“Gladly.”

An hour later, Stiles has finally worn himself out enough to lie down and let Derek put on a movie. Malia curls up in his lap and they put on The Great Mouse Detective. After a while, Stiles falls asleep. Derek groans and stretches out in the corner. “If I survive the next four days, somebody owes me a medal.”

“I’ll have one made,” Tom says, amused despite himself.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Through the combined efforts of the pack, Stiles somehow survives until the full moon. They give him his last dose of the immunosuppressants at sunset, and Dr. Rana says it should cover him for about twelve hours. So by the time the sun comes up, he’ll be off medication. By that point, the virus should be dead or dying. “But don’t hesitate an instant if you feel something’s wrong,” she says. “Go to the emergency room and call my cell phone, and I can meet you there.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, and thanks her. He wants to shake her hand, but can’t get his claws to come in. Derek reminds him that it can be hard to control the shift during the first full moon, and not to be too hard on himself.

Finally, after what seems like a glacial epoch, he’s out of the hospital. “Here, get in the car and we can have you back to the preserve by the time it’s fully dark,” Tom says, and Stiles dives into it. He’s talking a mile a minute as they drive, and is out of the car before it can come to a full stop.

For a little while, he just runs. There are wolves running alongside him, he’s not sure who exactly, and he doesn’t care. He feels _good_ , for the first time in a long time. He remembers Derek mentioning at one point that being in full wolf form makes things simpler, and now he understands. The moonlight fills him with a fierce, unbridled joy, the kind he’s never really felt as a human.

He runs until the moon is high in the sky, and finally comes to a stop in a clearing. The other wolves gather around him, some fully shifted, some only half. Tyler pounces on him, and he laughs, tussling with him as he struggles to figure out how to control all his limbs. They play tag and they wrestle and eventually even the kids are starting to get tired but Stiles is still keyed up.

Derek leans in, fully human, and nips at his ear. “Come back to the house with me,” he says in a low voice.

“Oh _hell_ yes,” Stiles says, grabbing him by the wrist and towing him back towards the house. Once they’re inside, he says, “I wasn’t sure if this was kosher, you know, I know the full moon is all about running with the pack and everything but I was going out of my _mind_ with the need to ride your dick. Take your clothes off.”

Derek snorts a little and tries to start doing so, but Stiles is already stripping them off before he can do it himself. “Did you want – to go – upstairs?” he pants out.

“What? Huh?” Stiles leans in and starts mouthing at the crook of Derek’s shoulder, and Derek forgets what he was talking about. Stiles is disheveled and messy and _beautiful_ , and Derek gets his hands underneath Stiles’ thighs and pins him to the wall. Stiles moans as their bodies grind together. They kiss for what feels like hours, open-mouthed and enthusiastic and a little sloppy. Stiles runs his hands through Derek’s hair and digs his fingers into the back of Derek’s neck. Derek runs his fingers up the tips of Stiles’ ears, and he gasps, eyes going unfocused and body shuddering. “Oh, God, I need – I’m gonna – ”

“Okay,” Derek says, because Stiles clearly isn’t going to last long enough for Derek to actually fuck him, not with him already this close. He bites at the cords in Stiles’ neck and finds Stiles’ cock with one hand, giving it a few quick strokes. Stiles’ entire body goes tense against his, and his claws dig into Derek’s back as he comes.

“Ohhhhhh my God,” Stiles mumbles, as Derek carefully slides them both to the floor. “Oh my fucking God. Okay. I love you. That was awesome. Let’s go again.”

Derek snorts quietly despite himself and says, “I think you’re gonna need a minute.”

“Okay, yeah, but we should spend that minute kissing,” Stiles says, and Derek, well, Derek really can’t argue with that.

 

~ ~ ~ ~


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope all you lovely people have enjoyed this installment of The Searching Ceremonies! Thank you for all your kind comments and support! <3
> 
> *insert obligatory author's note about how I'm not planning another installment but you never know what might happen* *just copy the one I put on the first, second, and third installments lmao*

It feels odd to be settling down for the night of the full moon without Stiles. For years, it’s been Tom, Melissa, Stiles, Allison, and the kids during the full moon. They weren’t old enough to go out and run with the pack for a while, and then Sylvia had turned out to be human and wouldn’t be going out with the pack any time soon. Dominic is still too young, in fact, and of course so are the twins.

Now they have Marisela as well, and this time Peter and Malia are joining them. Malia isn’t affected by the phases of the moon, and although Peter is, he’s got enough control over his shift so that he doesn’t _have_ to indulge full moon madness. He had mentioned earlier that once he got Stiles out with the rest of the pack, he would head back to the main house.

Marisela is sulking profoundly while Allison puts on some Spongebob episodes for Sylvia and Dominic. “Spongebob is dumb,” she mutters. “I wanna watch Moana again.”

“Dominic was scared during Moana,” Tom says. “That weird . . . crab . . . thing freaked him out.”

Marisela scowls more deeply. “Only babies get scared at Disney movies.”

“We can watch Moana after Dominic and the twins are in bed,” Tom tells her. “Okay?”

“I guess.”

“But you don’t have to watch Spongebob,” Peter adds. “Allison, Melissa, if you could handle the children? We could take our own out to Malia’s room and find something to do.”

“Sure,” Allison says.

“Call us if you need us,” Tom tells her, and Allison nods. Marisela is still clearly unhappy, but she’s sulking less as they head back to the porch. This has been fairly constant over the past few days. Sullen and withdrawn seems to be her baseline state of being, but Tom and Peter can’t blame her. She lost her mother and her whole world had been turned on end. It makes sense that she needs time to deal with it. The two of them have talked about it a little, and agreed not to push. All they can do for now is love Marisela and give her a home, try to treat her the same as they treat Malia.

It’s a gorgeous summer night, and the screens keep the mosquitos away. Peter turns on the lamps, and Tom says, “So, what do you want to do? We could read something, or we have coloring books and Legos.”

Marisela curls up in the corner and pulls her knees up to her chest. “I don’t wanna do any of those things.”

“How about a game?” Peter says. “What sort of games did you play with your mother?”

“You’re not my mother!” Marisela spits back. “I’m not going to play her games with you.”

Peter takes this in stride. “Okay. Coloring books it is.”

This doesn’t seem to appease Marisela very much, but she doesn’t actively argue. Tom gets out the coloring books and the markers that Malia likes to use. She pounces on them, and Marisela joins her somewhat reluctantly, seeming afraid of being left out. Peter sits down at the table, carefully leafs through one of the adult coloring books they bought, and chooses a picture.

Marisela scowls at him. “Why are you coloring?”

“I like to color,” Peter says, picking up a dark blue marker. “I find it soothing. The Buddhists use mandalas as – ”

“You’re an adult,” Marisela interrupts. “Adults don’t color.”

Malia growls at her. “Don’t be mean to Papa. He can color if he wants to.”

“It’s stupid,” Marisela says.

“Just because your mom didn’t color – ”

“Leave my mama out of this!” Marisela shouts, throwing a marker at her sister’s face. Peter snatches it out of the air before it can impact.

“Sweetheart, why are you upset?” Tom asks gently, sitting down next to Marisela. “Is it something one of us said, or did? Are you sad because of your mom?”

“I heard you earlier, you know,” Marisela shoots at him. “About how my mama is dead, how you used the, the DNA to identify her body.”

Tom lets out a breath. “I’m sorry your mom died, Marisela. I really am. I didn’t want – ”

“You didn’t trust her!” Marisela shouts. “I knew she was dead, she told me she wasn’t coming back and the only way she wouldn’t come back for me is if she was dead! But you didn’t trust her! You had to use her blood to make sure she was dead.” Marisela is crying now, spitting out the words between sobs. “You still thought she was bad! My mama wasn’t bad! She died to make sure I was safe and she wasn’t bad!”

“Okay, listen to me, sweetheart,” Tom says, taking Marisela’s face in his hands. “You’re right. One hundred percent. But she hurt my son, my only son who means so much to me that I would die without him. I had to be sure. I had to _know_. She died to protect you and I know that must hurt more than I can understand. But I had to be sure, Marisela. I had to know without a shadow of a doubt that my son was safe. The same way your mother had to know that you were safe. Can you try to understand that?”

“I guess,” Marisela says, ducking her head.

“Your mama wasn’t bad,” Tom continues, tilting her chin up so Marisela had to look at him. “She did bad things, but she wasn’t bad. And I’m sorry she died, Marisela. I am. She sacrificed herself so you could be safe, because that was more important than anything else in the world. That you would be safe, that you could stop running and have a real life.”

“It’s not fair,” Marisela says.

“No, it isn’t,” Tom agrees.

Marisela snuffles a little. After a moment, Malia reaches out and takes her hand. “Moms being gone is hard. I cried a lot after my mom died. It’s okay if you’re sad or angry. Daddy and Papa will still take care of you even if you bite. That’s what they’re like.”

Marisela nods and wipes her eyes. “Okay.”

Malia rocks back and forth on her heels. “You wanna play hide and seek? The house is really big. There’s lots of good spots.”

“Okay,” Marisela says, and trots after her.

Peter and Tom watch them go, and then Peter turns to Tom and says, “How long do you think it will take Marisela to realize that you can’t play hide and seek with shifters, because we are all, to a one, filthy cheaters?”

Tom starts laughing despite himself. After everything that’s happened, it feels good.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

By two AM, Derek is exhausted, and Stiles is still full of energy. “I’m starved, want to go get something to eat?” he asks, and Derek moans but drags himself down the stairs without bothering to put any clothes on. “Look at all this food! My dad is the best, seriously. It must have taken him hours to get this much. Ooh, fruit. I’m going to chop up some fruit to have for breakfast tomorrow. I should make brunch, huh? Or do you think I’ll be too tired?”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Derek says dryly.

Stiles laughs, then says, “No, but seriously. I, uh, I won’t be like this forever, right? Because it feels kind of like I’ve got my finger stuck in a socket and can’t turn off.”

Derek shakes his head. “When the sun comes up, you’re going to crash and crash hard. You’ve seen the way we all laze around the day after the full moon. I’ll set an alarm so you don’t sleep the day away, but yeah, you should probably focus more on prepping for dinner than for breakfast.”

“Got it. Well, we can still eat fruit. I love fruit.” Stiles starts slicing into a peach and says, “I haven’t thought about who should go first in the great dinner requests.”

“You,” Derek says, leaning on the kitchen island and stealing a strawberry.

Stiles thinks about that, then frowns and shakes his head. “Nope. Marisela.”

“Oh, yeah. Good idea. What did she ask for? I don’t remember your dad mentioning.”

“She didn’t,” Stiles says. “I asked him about it later. Apparently he tried to get an answer and she just shrugged and said she’ll eat whatever. Probably didn’t have a lot of variety if they were constantly on the run, sort of like Malia did. So we are going to have a buffet!” He claps his hands and starts digging in the refrigerator. “I’m gonna do a veggie tray and a cheese tray and I’m going to chop _all the things_ – then I’ll make some rolls and some muffins made out of that yellow stuff that grows in Iowa and maybe some potato salad? Plus I’m going to bake _all_ the desserts – ”

“Okay,” Derek says, yawning. “You do that.”

Stiles whistles to himself as gets started, and Derek listens fondly as Stiles rambles on about the different fruits and vegetables he’s chopping. Namely, he rambles on about how things taste and smell different. “Not like _different_ different, sort of the same different, but stronger?” Stiles says. “Like bitter things are more bitter; I had to add twice as much, uh, white cow-juice to my coffee to keep it from choking me. But sweet things aren’t more sweet? It’s super weird to be honest - ”

He continues to talk about how he finally understands super-tasters because the broccoli he ate the other day had a funny aftertaste to it, and how he might have to start taking it easy on the tomatoes but the pineapple he’s chopping smells so good that he wants to roll in it. Derek yawns a little, and tries to pay attention.

“And you know what I was thinking?” Stiles says. “We should get married.”

Derek startles a little at this. Stiles doesn’t notice.

“I mean, it’s not like getting married would be a big deal, given the whole mate thing,” Stiles continues, “but I still really want to marry you. Like. I want to be your _husband_. Have you see the way Peter looks when he calls my dad his husband? It’s the cutest, most possessive expression and no that’s not a contradiction. I don’t know how Peter does it, he just does.”

“Uh huh,” Derek says.

“I wanna marry you _tomorrow_ ,” Stiles says. “We can do that, right? We can just get married and then we’ll be husbands and it’s gonna be awesome. But then I guess we should still have a wedding. You know what we should have for the wedding cake? We should have spice cake. Because you love ginger so much. I know you love spice cake. Anyone who doesn’t like it, they can just, I don’t know, get over it. Plus we should have little wolf cake toppers. Like, wolves wearing tuxedos. And for our wedding song we should have that song from the Bodyguard. Because, you know, it already sounds like wolves howling - ”

Shoulders shaking from the efforts to hold in his laughter, Derek grabs Stiles around the waist and gets him in a hug, lifting Stiles’ feel off the floor. Stiles makes a pleased noise and starts rubbing his cheek against Derek’s shoulder.

“You,” Derek says, “are the most gorgeous, amazing, _ridiculous_ person I have ever met. God, I missed you. I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Stiles says, smiling happily, his pupils dilated and looking honestly a little drunk on the moon and the sex and Derek’s scent. “So that’s a yes on the marriage thing?”

Derek sets him back down and lets go. “One,” he says, kissing Stiles’ knuckles. “Yes, I will marry you. Two,” he continues, kissing the other hand, “I will not marry you tomorrow. Mating ceremonies are a big deal, especially when the alpha of the pack is as important and powerful as my mom is. There’s protocol and tradition and a lot of stuff that we can’t skip over if we don’t want other packs in the area to take an insult.”

“Meh,” Stiles says. “My dad and Peter didn’t do all that.”

“But your dad and Peter didn’t realize they were mates at the time. It’s different. Besides, everyone involved understood that the two of them wouldn’t have wanted a big thing. We, unfortunately, are going to have a big thing.”

“Okay. Spice cake?”

“Yes on the spice cake, yes on wolves in tuxedos, although where you thought you could get those at three in the morning so we could get married tomorrow, I don’t know.” Derek kisses him on the forehead. “No on the Whitney Houston. On _any_ Whitney Houston. There will be no Whitney Houston at our wedding.”

“Well, okay.” Stiles goes back to chopping vegetables. “So we’ll get married and then I think I definitely want to work on cold cases because it seems like there’s like a fifty percent smaller chance people will try to kill me for that. Like, screw the FBI and Quantico and Calaveras. I’m gonna solve Tamam Shud and catch the Zodiac Killer.”

Derek chuckles quietly. “Go find D. B. Cooper?”

“D. B. Cooper is totally dead, come on. He parachuted into a freakin’ rainstorm in the, the place with lots of trees and stuff. Ten bucks says he never even got the chute open.”

“I’ll take your word on it,” Derek says. “And I do like the idea of you trying to solve cases that are unlikely to have living perpetrators.”

“Right? I think I’ll work under a fake name, anyway. Maybe that’ll stop people from targeting me for my genius.”

“Sounds good to me,” Derek says, nuzzling into his shoulder.

“You know what else I was kiiiiiiiiinda thinking about?” Stiles says, and Derek gives him a questioning look. “Kids. Having kids. Like. I know you didn’t want to. And if you still don’t want to, that’s one thousand percent okay! That’s up to you. But if you were thinking about changing your mind, just, let me know. Because Malia is so cute and you would make such a great dad? Like, the best dad. Okay, no, my dad is the best dad, but you’d be the second best dad. You’re just so good with her, and Uncle P was telling me about how you helped him out with the . . . the girls from the same womb, why is that word suddenly not in my memory?”

“Twins,” Derek supplies.

“Right. Talia had twins and I called them twins up until three weeks ago when the word ‘twins’ took a sabbatical out of my brain. Anyway, you’d be a great dad. If you wanted to be.”

Derek smiles a little. “I’ll think about it. You’d make a great dad, too, you know.”

“Nowhere near as good as you. I don’t have the patience you do. Which I think is okay! You know, people are different, we all have our own strengths, et cetera. Plus they probably wouldn’t be ours. I mean, I guess maybe they could be partially ours? If we could find egg donors and stuff? Your sisters would probably be willing, but wouldn’t that be kind of weird? Maybe less weird if it was Laura, since she has her own kids already. With Cora it’d be like ‘hey, you haven’t used your eggs yet, can we have a couple?’”

“Please stop talking about my sisters’ eggs,” Derek says.

“Okay, well, I think adoption would be awesome too. Get a little werefox or a baby Hellhound or something, wouldn’t that be adorable? I don’t know if baby Hellhounds are a thing. Are baby Hellhounds a thing? They totally should be - although, you know, if we adopt someone a little older we wouldn’t have to deal with diapers and potty-training. How do more people not think of that? Everyone’s like ‘I want to adopt a baby!’ Yeah, I’m gonna take a pass on that. This seems like some sort of cheat code to life that most people don’t know about . . . oh my God, these raspberries smell like the best thing ever, let me - ” Stiles pops one into his mouth, squishes it with his tongue, and moans.

“Jesus, that’s obscene,” Derek mutters. “I’m losing to a fruit.”

“Yeah, okay, you are definitely not losing,” Stiles says, “and I will prove otherwise as soon as I’m done eating these - ”

Derek grabs him around the waist and bites him on the ear. “We’ll see about that.”

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Stiles doesn’t really remember going to bed the next day. Actually he doesn’t remember a lot after about four in the morning. He thinks he started losing a lot of words and baking several batches of cookies, but he couldn’t swear to it on a Bible. He definitely remembers seeing the first rays of sunlight and suddenly feeling so warmly, gloriously tired. Derek must have carried him up to bed.

When the alarm clock goes off, he moans and tries to bury his head underneath the blankets. He feels the bed shift as Derek gets up, and almost immediately falls back to sleep. A few minutes or a few hours later, the blankets are drawn back and he smells food. “Mmmmf,” he says, trying to squirm back underneath the covers.

“Brought you some tea and some waffles,” Derek says. “Maybe not the breakfast of champions, but it’ll have to do. Plus I’m drawing a bath for you.”

“Lemme sleep,” Stiles moans.

Derek shakes his head, smiling a little. “It’s already half past noon. If you keep sleeping, you’ll regret it when you want to go to bed tonight. Trust me. I have a lot of experience with this.”

“Fine,” Stiles says, with a bit of a huff. The food revives him a bit, although he’s still yawning as Derek helps him into the bath. “This is nice,” he murmurs. When Talia had built the third house, he had specifically requested a bathtub big enough for two. It’s one of his favorite things about the house, actually. So he can curl up against Derek’s shoulder and let the hot water soothe his tired muscles.

He’s barely gotten out of the bath and gotten dressed when his phone chimes. He grabs it to see a text from his father, wanting to know if he’s up because Malia wants to come over. He says to give him a few minutes and then everyone can come over; he’ll get the food set up.

His phone rings, and with some trepidation, his father says, “What food?”

“Oh, I, uh, I apparently went on a chopping frenzy last night,” Stiles says. “I mean, first I ran around for three hours, then I had sex for two hours, and then I think I chopped vegetables and other things for a few hours. I chopped, like, everything in my refrigerator. And apparently I made three batches of cookies? Although Derek says we ate most of the snickerdoodles because I wanted to fucking _roll_ in them – ”

Tom laughs quietly. “Okay. I’ll tell the others, we’ll give you a few minutes to set up.”

“Thanks, Dad!” Stiles hangs up and jogs down the stairs. The other teenagers are sitting in the living room, gathered around Mario Kart. “Heyyyyyy!” Stiles says, suddenly so full of love that he can barely stand it. He throws himself onto Scott, the nearest person. “Hey, buddy, I missed you! We don’t hang out enough anymore, we should have a marathon of that, that TV show with the blue box.” He pounds on Scott’s back before releasing him and embracing Allison. “Scott’s so lucky he found you, you’re so awesome and pretty,” he says.

“Are you . . . crying?” Cora asks, as he lets go of Allison and turns to her.

Stiles snuffles into her shoulder and says, “You’re such a good sister to Derek. You’ve, like, saved his ass so many times. I love you.”

Cora pats his back somewhat gingerly. “I love you, too.”

Isaac is laughing quietly, reaching out to run his fingers through Cora’s hair. “Lycanthropy,” he says. “It’s a hell of a drug.”

“Isaac, my man, my pal,” Stiles says, letting go of Cora so he can hug Isaac.

The front door opens and Laura and Jonathan come in with their kids, and Stiles of course has to hug all of them, and by the time he’s done with that, the rest of the pack has arrived. Peter gently pats him on the shoulder as he blubbers about how much he loves them all, and Talia hugs him for several long minutes.

“And, and I have the best little sisters,” he says, impatiently wiping the tears off his face. “Okay, Marisela, I only just met you but you’re going to be an amazing little sister. I can already tell. I made you cookies but I ate a bunch of them. Sorry.”

Marisela wrinkles her nose at him and says, “You’re weird.”

“I know,” he says cheerfully. He scoops up Malia and swings her around. “You’re the best little sister, too. I’m so glad you’re my little sister. You make our dad so happy and Uncle Peter so happy and I love you so much. I’m so glad they brought you home.”

Malia hesitates a little, then says, “Are you still glad even though you got hurt?”

“What?” Stiles blinks at her. “Oh, geez, I get hurt _all the time_ , it’s like, just my life. People try to use me and try to hurt me and usually I don’t even get anything out of it! This time I got two amazing little sisters! So really, things could be a lot worse. Of course I’m still glad they brought you home! And I cooked you all the things, Marisela, because Dad said you didn’t really know what you liked yet, so I made a bunch of different things for you to try. See?” He gestures at the long table, where Derek has been quietly setting out the dishes.

“This is all for me?” Marisela asks, her eyes widening.

“Well, it’s for everyone, but I made it special for you, so you could try everything. See, over here there’s cheese and salami, and then a bunch of veggies and fruit, and this is a pickle and olive plate because Malia really likes pickles, so I bet you will too! So here, grab a plate – there’s dessert but we’ll do that afterwards – ”

Everyone is trying not to laugh, but they let Marisela have first pick off the platters, and Malia gets second. The two of them bicker back and forth as Marisela decides that some of what Malia has chosen looks good. The rest of the pack serves themselves, and there’s always at least three conversations going on at once.

“Oh, hey! Hey, Talia!” Stiles says, darting through the crowd. “How much time do you need to plan a wedding?”

Talia chokes on a piece of carrot, and Aaron pats her on the back. “Whose wedding?” she manages.

“Ours, of, course, me and Derek’s,” Stiles says, grinning sunnily at her.

“Well, I would say six months, minimum,” Talia says. “I thought you two had decided to wait until you were done with college?”

“We did, but then we decided not to, or at least I decided that.” Stiles frowns suddenly. “Uh, Derek, did you actually agree with me or did I just steamroll right over you? I was, uh, pretty hyper last night.”

Derek wraps his arms around Stiles from behind, pressing a kiss into his hair. “You were a bit of a steamroller, but I did agree.” To his mother, he adds, “We don’t want to wait anymore. But I know that planning these things takes time.”

“What’s the big deal?” Tom asks. “When Peter and I got married, it was just a quick thing with a JP.”

Talia shakes her head a little and says, “It was different with the two of you, mainly because it was a second marriage for both of you, which are incredibly rare among wolves. Mating ceremonies are a big deal – the best comparison is probably to a Hindu wedding. They last several days, and there’s a lot of tradition to them.”

“Like what?” Isaac asks curiously.

“Well, for example, the phase of the moon depends on the participants,” Talia says. “Two born wolves would have their ceremony on a full moon; two turned wolves on a new moon. For Derek and Stiles, it would be on the quarter moon. I’m not sure why, actually – one of those traditions that’s been lost to time.”

“The length and, let’s say, intensity of the ceremony depends on the position of the pack members, too,” Aaron chimes in. “Derek is the son of the alpha, so his ceremony is a lot bigger deal than, say, Scott and Allison’s will be. But, it’s less complicated than when Talia and I got married – because we were both born wolves, so that was the alliance, the connection, of two separate packs.”

“All the packs in the area get invited, there’s a lot of protocol surrounding the gifts, rituals to make sure it’s a blessed union.” Talia smiles and says, “Mating ceremonies are a good example of werewolf culture to outsiders – intricate and ritualistic, but based around connection and joy.”

“May! We should get married in May!” Stiles turns to Derek and says, “That’s our anniversary, you know? Our first kiss and me accepting you as my mate and all that stuff, that was May thirteenth. Okay, we can’t do it that exact date because of the phases of the moon thing, but we should get married to whatever quarter moon is closest to that. That’ll give us nearly a year to prepare.”

“Okay,” Derek says, smiling and rubbing his cheek against Stiles’ hair.

Talia wraps her arms around both of them, squeezing tightly. “Sounds good to me.”

“So do werewolf mating ceremonies have flower girls? Because if they don’t, ours is going to anyway; I have the world’s most adorable little sisters so obviously we’re going to have flower girls – and Tyler can be the ringbearer, I mean, I assume you guys have ringbearers because I know you do an exchange of rings – ”

Tom shakes his head and gets his son by the scruff of the neck. “As much as we all missed listening to you ramble, how about a toast?”

“To the happy couple,” Peter agrees, lifting his glass.

“To the world’s best husband-to-be,” Stiles says, and Derek flushes pink. Stiles turns to him and says, “I’m so happy you chose me. You know? Even though bad stuff has happened. I love all you guys so much. I wouldn’t give up the pack for anything.”

“We love you too,” Derek says, pulling him into an embrace. The others are quick to join in, piling on top of them. “Welcome home.”

 

~fin~


End file.
